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More Obama allies get waivers from costly Obamacare mandates

By Hans Bader

If Obamacare is so great, why are its biggest supporters seeking waivers of its costly provisions? And why are Obama backers the primary recipients of the many waivers from Obamacare that have been granted? As Dr. Milton R. Wolf notes,

“seven entire states and 1,372 businesses, unions and other institutions have received waivers from the law. The list includes the administration’s friends and allies and, of course, those who have the best lobbyists.  More than 50 percent of the Obamacare waiver beneficiaries are union members, which is striking because union members account for less than 12 percent of the American work force. The same unions that provided more than $120 million to Democrats in the last two elections and, in many cases, openly campaigned in favor of the government takeover of your health care, now celebrate that Obamacare is not their problem.  But the political payoffs don’t stop there. The Obama administration didn’t forget its closest friends in the latest round of waivers. Although there are 435 congressional districts across America, nearly 20 percent of the new waivers, amazingly, found their way to a single district — Mrs. Pelosi’s [the liberal former Speaker of the House of Representatives].”

While liberally granting waivers to its allies, the Administration has flouted the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), refusing to respond to FOIA requests about its criteria for waivers or why it has denied waivers to other applicants.  It is now being sued in federal court for violating FOIA.

Meanwhile, as a column in the Wall Street Journal noted, “the administration has already given an extravagant gift to the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), a key player in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  The AARP provided a big chunk of the $121 million spent on ads supporting the bill’s passage . . .HHS’s proposed regulations on Dec. 21 exempted the AARP’s lucrative ‘Medigap’ plans from the rate review and other mandates and requirements. . . The AARP is also exempt from the new law’s $500,000 cap on executive compensation. . .It won’t pay any of the estimated $14 billion in new taxes on insurance companies.”

The head of one seniors group noted that Obamacare “damages the AARP’s biggest competitor, Medicare Advantage,” and that “the AARP is likely to make millions, if not billions, more dollars in the coming years because it can sell many more Medigap plans without competition.”

Columbia University law professor Philip Hamburger argues that the arbitrary waiver process under Obamacare makes it unconstitutional (See his series on the subject here, here, and here).  Even if the waiver process is not independently unconstitutional, its opaqueness, unpredictability, and indefiniteness are yet more illustrations of how Obamacare violates the clear-statement rule contained in the Supreme Court’s Dole and Pennhurst decisions, argue the leaders of the Minnesota and North Carolina legislatures.

Obamacare also harms medical advances, patients, and employers.  And it contains racial discrimination and racial preferences that were criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

It’s not living up to its backers’ promises.  As Dr. Wolf notes,

“President Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrats all, in their rush to take over America’s health care system, made all sorts of outlandish, unkeepable promises. Among the most egregious: Obamacare would allow you to keep your current health insurance and your doctor. Mr. Obama’s own Medicare chief actuary now acknowledges that Obamacare may cause up to 20 million Americans to lose their current health insurance policies, and doctors are increasingly leaving Medicare, Medicaid and the practice of medicine altogether. Good luck keeping them. Another unkeepable promise: Obamacare ‘will create 4 million jobs, 400,000 jobs almost immediately.’ The Congressional Budget Office’s budget director estimates the law actually will destroy 800,000 jobs.”

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