ObamaCare: NOT For Everyone, After All

ObamaCare was pitched to us as the needed "reform" that would fix our health care problems and make the world a better place. What we're finding out now is that's only true conditionally. While most of us have to comply with the new law, quite a few people are getting exemptions.

The biggest stumbling block right now is the requirement for businesses to offer a minimum level of insurance to their employees. But employers like McDonald's offer very minimal insurance to their part-time employees that doesn't meet the government-imposed requirements. If forced to comply with the law, they would have to drop insurance coverage altogether for their part-time workers. But all they had to do was ask, apparently, and now they are the proud owner of a bouncing baby "waiver" that exempts them from having to comply with the law in this respect.

And McDonald's isn't alone... At this point in time, more than 700 such waivers have been issued. Uh... 733, to be precise... though that may change quite quickly.

My first question is this: If the law is so great, shouldn't it apply to everyone equally? And if all these businesses find it necessary to get waivers, then maybe we can all admit that the law isn't that great.

But what's even MORE interesting is the list of waivers issued.


Topping the list are none other than a laundry list of unions. The Service Employee International Union (SEIU) is exempt from complying with the law. I wonder if that has anything to do with Andy Stern, former President of the SEIU, and his $27 million contributions to Obama in 2008?

Altogether, more than 40 unions are exempt from ObamaCare. So are a short list of states: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee.

The point is that if ObamaCare is a bad deal for these States, unions, and companies, why do we believe it's all skittles and beer for the rest of us? If that many companies need waivers from this one regulation, what other regulations are hiding out there that will require a similar flood of waivers?

This law was not well thought out and was not designed very well. In their haste to pass a law that had been a liberal goal for decades, they slapped together a monolithic and labyrinthine program that few will ever fully understand. The bad effects will outnumber the good ones, and waivers will be the new gold-standard: a government permission slip to remain in business a little while longer.