Some Very Strange Bedfellows

The New York Post reports today (June 12, 2013) that the Freelancers’ Union is seeking relief from Obamacare, and the State of New York may be about to help them.

It seems the Freelancers’ Union – which in 2012 was granted $341 million in Federal loans to set up an insurance CO-OP under Obamacare - has run into a big problem. It’s figured out that Obamacare will seriously damage its insurance business.

Will this damage come from “unexpected” problems encountered by an expert insurance organization blindsided by completely unpredictable insurance requirements?    You can believe that if you like, but I think you would be wrong.

According to the Post, the Freelancers’ Union says that Obamacare’s “onerous regulations and taxes will burden its innovative health insurance model for the self-employed with enormous added costs.”  In other words, Freelancers’ problems are the same Obamacare problems that businesses and other insurance companies have been warning about for the past four years.   They were neither unpredictable nor unexpected.

So what does Freelancers’ want?  It wants authority from the State of New York to convert its health insurance model to a self-funded model.  If it provides self-funded coverage rather than insurance it becomes an issuer of “ERISA Plans” that won’t be subject to Obamacare.

Freelancers’ Union states that Obamacare will cost its members “$38 million a year” which translates into “a per-person premium load of $178 a month”.  That’s the additional amount that would be needed just to pay for the Obamacare load.

Is that devastating?  Well if it is, wouldn't Obamacare be equally devastating to the other insured small group plans in New York – and all across America?

Yet Freelancers’ Union asks the State of New York to step in and spare their successful small-group insurance plan from the devastating effects of the President’s ‘affordable’ health law - but not to spare any OTHER insurance plan from that law.

And say, isn’t it ironic that the Freelancers Union has taken up the conservative cry that Obamacare will hurt more than it can help?  Obamacare is creating some very strange bedfellows.