Frogs and scorpions, one more time

It never gets old:

Unions are frustrated the Obama administration hasn’t responded to their calls for changes to ObamaCare.

Labor has watched with growing annoyance as the White House has backed ObamaCare changes in response to concerns from business groups, religious organizations and even lawmakers and their staffs.

They say they don’t understand why their concerns so far have fallen of deaf ears.

Why would that be?

Most unions backed ObamaCare’s passage, but labor argues provisions in the law could cut employee hours, unfairly tax their plans and force workers off their union health plans into the law’s potentially more costly insurance exchanges.

The key issue are union members who are among the roughly 20 million people who use non-profit multi-employer “Taft-Hartley” health plans.

Unions want the administration to change ObamaCare so that those plans are treated as qualified health plans that can earn tax subsidies. Under the administration's interpretation of the law, the multi-employer plans are not eligible for the subsidies.

Without those subsidies, employers may have the incentive to drop the plans and force workers onto the insurance exchanges.

Wait, the exchanges are more costly? The exchanges that were set up by the Affordable Health Care Act? Dang.

Unite Here was the first national union to endorse Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary, but Taylor warned their could be a backlash if the administration doesn’t meet their concerns.

If they lose their health coverage, his members “will blame the people who passed that bill and did nothing to fix it,” he said.

“The administration has found resolutions for a whole variety of issues and the fact that their biggest supporters will be put at the mercy of the for-profit insurance industry will leave a very bad, bad taste,” Taylor said. “You can't blame the Republicans on this one. This is a Democratic bill through and through.”

Hope and change, people. Hope and change.