Obamacare: Another union boss speaks out against the healthcare law

American Watchtower: The unions all jumped on board to support Obamacare after their bosses carved out an exemption from the law for their members. This exemption secured the support of the Democrats’ largest special interest group, but recently they have begun to realize they were lied to and will be subjected to the healthcare reform law. Needless to say, they are not happy that they will also be subjected to the law they helped to pass.

First we learned the AFL-CIO was losing 40,000 members because of the Affordable Care Act, which led AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka to demand changes to the law. And now another union leader is speaking out against the unintended consequences of Obamacare.

Here is what LIUNA President Terry O’Sullivan had to say today:

Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) President Terry O’Sullivan said, “if the Affordable Care Act is not fixed, and it destroys the health and welfare funds that we have all fought for and stand for, then I believe it needs to be repealed. We don’t want it repealed. We want it fixed, fixed, fixed.”

O’Sullivan added: “We can’t have the unintended consequences for the proud men and women that we represent to be collateral damage in the healthcare fight in this country.”

What people like Trumka and O’Sullivan are either ignoring, don’t realize, or do not care to admit is this: None of this was unintended, it was the plan of the Obama regime and the Democrats all along. They want people to lose their healthcare insurance so that support will grow for a single-payer system for that was the plan all along.

These union leaders did not give a damn about these unintended consequences because they believed they would be exempted from the law, but now that they are not they are feigning outrage at what is about to befall the American people.

Much like the Federal employees, once they gain their exemption from the law they will quietly fade into the sunset on this issue because they do not care about the Average American, they only care about the people (their members) who pay their salaries. To quote ‘Blazing Saddles,’ they must protect their phony, baloney jobs.

These people are now upset because they have learned they will be subjected to the very same disastrous legislation from which they thought they were exempt, and I for one find it hard to feel sorry for them now that they have learned they are no better, or different, than any other American taxpayer.

Administration rejects labor's request for ObamaCare subsidies - The Hill's Healthwatch: thehill.com/blogs/healthwa…

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ObamaCare Epiphany,unions,waking-up,Defund ObamaCare,repeal or replace ObamaCare,ACA

AFL-CIO Nevada Passes Resolution to Openly Criticize Obama Administration Over Obamacare

TownHall: A month ago leaders from three major labor unions, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, UFCW President Joseph Hansen and UNITE-HERE President D. Taylor, wrote a scathing letter to the Obama administration about how Obamacare will destroy the 40 hour work week for hardworking Americans. The letter called for the administration to "fix" what was broken and had a strong tone of regret when it came to supporting President Obama and the re-election of pro-Obamacare Democrats.

Time is running out: Congress wrote this law; we voted for you. We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.

Now, the AFL-CIO in Nevada has passed a resolution to openly criticize the Obama administration over Obamacare, again stressing the situation needs to be fixed by the very people who created it. The resolution is a result of union concerns being ignored.

Signaling a growing rift between some unions and the White House over the Affordable Care Act, the Nevada State AFL-CIO passed a stinging resolution Wednesday that criticized the administration for its handling of their concerns with the health care reform law. The resolution claims the law could end up "destroying" the unions' multi-employer health plans if the administration doesn't come up with a regulatory fix.
"[O]ur union members and their families originally offered strong political and moral support for the promise of the Affordable Care Act because it would expand health care coverage for more Americans," the resolution read. But when it came to dealing with the unions' concerns, "the Administration has postured on proposals to address the problem, but no proposal to date will actually solve the problem. Our health plans only get worse."

Other unions, like UNITE HERE, have reportedly been in talks with the White House that haven't been going so well.

In an interview, UNITE HERE President D. Taylor said the union has been in talks with the White House and the Treasury Department over how Taft-Hartley plans should be interpreted under the law. According to Taylor, if workers under Taft-Hartley plans aren't eligible for subsidies, employers will see little reason to remain a part of such plans down the road, potentially forcing workers to purchase their own health care on the state-run exchanges, which are unlikely to offer so much coverage at such low rates.
"We've been working for over two years with essentially all aspects of the government, including Treasury, which wants to interpret [Taft-Hartley] as an employer plan, and it's not," Taylor said. "The Affordable Care Act has clearly been devised so that it would make our nonprofit Taft-Hartley plans completely uncompetitive."
"We want to hold the president to his word that you can keep the plan you like," Taylor added.

Meanwhile on the economic front, we're seeing more and more companies cut hours and the overwhelming majority (more than 70 percent) of new jobs being created are part time.

Administration rejects labor's request for ObamaCare subsidies - The Hill's Healthwatch: thehill.com/blogs/healthwa…

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ObamaCare Epiphany,unions,waking-up,Defund ObamaCare,repeal or replace ObamaCare,ACA

Major change coming to Obamacare: Anyone who voted for or supported BO will receive an exemption

Conscience of a Conservative:  Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, was written with explicit language that it was to include everyone. No exceptions. Even members of Congress and their staff were mandated to follow the same rules as every other American citizen. This was apparently done to appease the Republicans and get their support for the bill. Then just before the 2012 elections several unions who had endorsed and campaigned for Barack Hussein Obama began to receive exemptions from the mandatory requirements. Then it was disclosed that members of Congress were concerned that their highly paid staff members would be persuaded to leave their cushy jobs if they had to pay for their own health insurance, like everyone else. So our Great Leader issued a decree that made them exempt and the government would continue to provide their insurance. Now we read that 40,000 union members have quit the AFL-CIO because they don’t like the idea of having to pay for their health insurance.

40,000 Longshoreman Quit AFL-CIO Blaming ObamaCare

In what is being reported as a surprise move, the 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that they have formally ended their association with the AFL-CIO, one of the nation’s largest private sector unions. The Longshoremen citied Obamacare and immigration reform as two important causes of their disaffiliation.

In an August 29 letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, ILWU President Robert McEllrath cited quite a list of grievances as reasons for the disillusion of their affiliation, but prominent among them was the AFL-CIO’s support of ObamaCare.

“We feel the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along,” McEllrath wrote in the letter to Trumka.

The ILWU President made it clear they are for a single-payer, nationalized healthcare policy and are upset with the AFL-CIO for going along with Obama on the confiscatory tax on their “Cadillac” healthcare plan.

What isn’t a surprise is that almost immediately after this announcement, some union leaders asked Obama to also exclude them from the mandatory coverage requirement. And it looks like they will get it. So what it all comes to is that the only people who will be forced to buy health insurance will be people who didn’t support or vote for Obama. In other words, Obamacare is really just a tax on Republicans.

In order to get Obamacare passed through Congress, then Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously remarked, “You have to pass the bill before you can see what’s in it.” But even when the bill was being written it had parts added for the expressed purpose of persuading certain groups from opposing it. Like the powerful NRA gun lobby. Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid inserted a clause in ACA that reversed a previous order to have family Physicians inquire if their patients had a gun in their house.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Obama issued his 23 Executive Orders to formulate Gun Control and one of those orders retracted the clause in Obamacare that Harry Reid inserted and once again, family doctors will be asking their patients if they own a gun. And since all medical records will be electronically stored and accessed by the government, anyone who admits they have a gun will be easily identified.

The true nature of Barack Hussein Obama’s government is becoming clearer and clearer every day. He admits he doesn’t need Congress to pass his laws, he can issue them by Executive Order. The Constitution is just an inconvenient piece of paper to him. He ignores and changes written laws to please himself and his friends and his supporters by issuing his Royal Decrees and Exemptions. It would not be surprising to learn he has a plan to remain in office after the end of his present term. And yes, there is a word for that, its called Dictator.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides.

Technorati Tags: Constitution,Financial,Politics,Survival,Taxation,ObamaCare,healthcare,watch the other hand,ACA,Defund ObamaCare,Executive Orders,EO's,ObamaCare mandates,ObamaCare surprises,gun control,Big Brother,Nancy Pelosi,Harry Reid,unconstitutional

At Age 76 ObamaCare will not...

PLEASE SHARE THIS OUTRAGE TO EVERYONE  YOU CAN

This was not a surprise to me and won’t be those who have been following the ObamaCare Bill process.

THIS should be read by everyone, especially important to those over 75... If you are younger, then it applies to your parents or grandparents, and eventually to you. 

Your hospital Medicare admittance has just change under Obama Care. You must be admitted by your primary Physician in order for Medicare to pay for it! If you are admitted by an emergency room doctor it is treated as outpatient care where hospital costs are not covered. This is only the tip of the iceberg for Obama Care. Just wait to see what happen in 2013 & 2014!

Age 76 - Today, I went to the Dr. for my monthly B12 shot that I have been getting for a number of years. The nurse came and got me, got out the needle filled and ready to go then looked at the computer and got very quiet and asked if I was prepared to pay for it. I said no that my insurance takes care of it.

She said, that Medicare had turned it down and went to talk to my Dr. about it. 15 minutes later she came back and said, she was sorry but they had tried every-thing they could but Medicare is beginning to turn many things away for seniors because of the projected Obama Care coming in. She was brushing at tears and said, "Some day they too will get old", I am so very sorry!!

Please for the sake of many good people. . . ..be/get informed please.

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS...

At age 76, when you most need it, you are no longer eligible for cancer treatment

* see page 272

What Nancy Pelosi didn't want us to know until after the healthcare bill was passed. Remember she said, "We have to pass the Bill so that we can see what's in it." Well, here it is.

Obama Care Highlighted by Page Number

THE CARE BILL HB 3200

JUDGE KITHIL IS THE 2ND OFFICIAL WHO HAS OUTLINED THESE PARTS OF THE CARE BILL.

Judge Kithil of Marble Falls, TX - highlighted the most egregious pages of HB3200 - things were edited, changed and moved for the passing of final version of the bill, but the intention and most or what was in the original bill is still there… just hidden, re-written, or has been/will be added in later! They have not stopped writing and re-writing this bill since it was passed.

Please read this....... especially the reference to pages 58 & 59
JUDGE KITHIL wrote:

**
Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally… (but seniors will lost much of their coverage… go figure.)
**
Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts.
**
Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN).
**
Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)
**
Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees.
**
Page 272. section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age.
**
Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception.

**
Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. (Death counseling..)
**
Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.

HAD ENOUGH???? Judge Kithil then goes on to identify:
"Finally, it is specifically stated that this bill will not apply to members of Congress!”
Honorable David Kithil of Marble Falls , Texas

All of the above should give you the ammo you need to oppose/fight Obamacare.

Please send this information on to all of your email contacts and print it out for those not on email.

Technorati Tags: seniors,ObamaCare,ObamaCare surprises,rationing,Cancer,Texas,watch the other hand,educate yourself and others,age 76,Nancy Pelosi,socialized medicine,end of life counseling,Progressivism,Communism,stand-up America,soylent green

USPS proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, pulling out of health-care plan - Solution or one step closer to single-payer?

By Joe Davidson, Updated: Thursday, August 11, 3:04 PM

In an attempt to stem its financial hemorrhaging, the U.S. Postal Service is seeking to reduce its workforce by 20 percent, including through layoffs now prohibited by union contracts. USPS also wants to withdraw its employees from the health and retirement plans that cover federal staffers and create its own benefit programs for postal employees.

This major restructuring of the Postal Service’s relationship with its workforce would need congressional approval and would face fierce opposition from postal unions. But if approved, eliminating contract provisions that prevent layoffs and quitting the federal employee health and retirement programs could have ramifications for workers across the government and throughout the national’s labor movement.

In a notice to employees informing them of its proposals, with the headline “Financial crisis calls for significant actions,” the Postal Service said “we will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit prefunding costs imposed by Congress.”

The Postal Service plan is described in two draft documents obtained by The Washington Post. A “Workforce Optimization” paper acknowledges “that asking Congress to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements is an extraordinary request by the Postal Service, and we do not make this request lightly. However, exceptional circumstances require exceptional remedies.

“The Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence.. . . If the Postal Service was a private sector business, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality.”

The USPS says it needs to reduce its workforce by 120,000 career positions by 2015, in addition to the 100,000 it expects through regular attrition. Some of the 120,000 could come through buyouts and other programs, but a significant number likely would be the result of layoffs, if Congress allows the agency to circumvent union contracts.

“Unfortunately, the collective bargaining agreements between the Postal Service and our unionized employees contain layoff restrictions that make it impossible to reduce the size of our workforce by the amount required by 2015,” according to the postal document. “Therefore, a legislative change is needed to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements.”  (Call in Chris Christy or Scott Walker… they might be able to help you with that?!?)

How Congress will respond to the postal proposals remains to be seen. Many Republicans, including those who have sponsored legislation that labor considers anti-union, may support the plan. Some Democrats probably would back union opposition. But the Postal Service’s critical financial situation could make Democrats have second thoughts.

Two members of Congress who have introduced separate postal reform bills were non-committal on the USPS plan.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) said “he is particularly interested in learning whether these proposals would be fair to employees and effective in reducing the Postal Service’s costs.”

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said: “These new ideas from the Postal Service are worth exploring. Options for reform and cost savings that will protect taxpayers from paying for a bailout, now or in the future, need to be on the table.”

Although what Congress will do is unknown, the response of postal unions has been certain.

American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey said, “The APWU will vehemently oppose any attempt to destroy the collective bargaining rights of postal employees or tamper with our recently-negotiated contract — whether by postal management or members of Congress.”

National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association President Don Cantriel: “We are absolutely opposed” to the layoff proposal. “We are opposed to pulling out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Our advisers are not advising us at all to even consider it.”

National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric V. Rolando: “The issues of lay-off protection and health benefits are specifically covered by our contract. . . . The Congress of the United States does not engage in contract negotiations with unions and we do not believe they are about to do so.”

Source:  Washington Post

They have two big problems… the unions are killing them and the country in general and the WH wants everyone to end up in a single-payer system… it was always their plan!

White House quietly exempts pampered politicos

WOLF: Tawdry details of Obamacare

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf

If you would like to know what the White House really thinks of Obamacare, there’s an easy way. Look past its press releases. Ignore its promises. Forget its talking points. Instead, simply witness for yourself the outrageous way the White House protects its best friends from Obamacare.

Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services(HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733.

Among the fortunate is a who’s who list of unions, businesses and even several cities and four states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee) but none of the friends of Barack feature as prominently as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

How can you get your own free pass from Obamacare? Maybe you can just donate $27 million to President Obama‘s campaign efforts. That’s what Andy Stern did as president of SEIU in 2008. He has been the most frequent guest at Mr. Obama‘s White House.

Backroom deals have become par for the course for proponents of Obamacare. Senators were greased with special favors, like Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and his Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary L. Landrieu and her Louisiana Purchase. Even the American Medical Association was brought in line under threat of losing its exclusive and lucrative medical coding contracts with the government.

Not only are the payoffs an affront to our democracy and an outright assault on our taxpayers, the timing itself of the latest release makes a mockery of this administration’s transparency promises. More than 500 of the 733 waivers, we now know, were granted in December but kept conveniently under wraps until the day after the president’s State of the Union address. HHS is no stranger to covering up bad news; in fact, this is becoming a disturbing pattern. Last year, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hid from Congress until after the Obamacare vote a damning report from the Medicare and Medicaid Office of the Actuary showing Obamacare would cost $311 billion more than promised and would displace 14 million Americans from their current insurance.

For this administration, transparency promises last only until the teleprompter is unplugged.

Backroom deals and cover-ups may be business as usual for Washington, but understanding why the Obama administration protects its friends from Obamacare offers special insight into what the purveyors of the mandate themselves think about their own law. This is key: The waivers aren’t meant to protect victims from unintended consequences of Obamacare; they are meant to exempt them from the very intentional increased costs of health insurance that the law causes. Under Section 2711 of the Public Health Service Act, Obamacare increases the annual cap of insurance benefits, which sounds great - as does everything else in big government - until the bill comes due, in this case, in the form of higher insurance premiums.

In short, the administration has decided that you will face increased health insurance premiums, but special friends in the unions will not. Look closely, and you’ll see not only the White House‘s duplicity but also what the Obama administration really thinks of its crown jewel, Obamacare. White House words say that the annual insurance benefit cap is a feature of the program, but its actions say that it’s a bug.

The question remains: If Obamacare is such a great law, why does the White House keep protecting its best friends from it?

Our democracy cannot allow a president to exercise the unholy power of picking and choosing winners and losers, of choosing who must follow his flawed laws and who gets a free pass. If any American deserves a waiver from Obamacare, then all Americans do.

It was Mr. Obama himself who infamously said, "We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends." This president speaks anything but softly, and Obamacare is his big stick.

It's time to give every American his own waiver: Repeal Obamacare.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist, medical director and cousin of President Obama. He blogs daily at miltonwolf.com.

h/t:  Laredo Tea Party  -  White House quietly exempts pampered politicos

Bill Hemmer

Breaking News: US JUDGE IN FLORIDA REFUSES TO IMPOSE INJUNCTION AGAINST OBAMA HEALTHCARE LAW.