Trainwreck Called Obamacare Just Keeps a-Rollin' Despite Missing Half Its Deadlines So Far
...one of the big selling features of ObamaCare was that the law would force providers to work toward health outcomes rather than the traditional fee-for-service model that exists in … well, every service market, including health care. HHS was supposed to have built reporting models for private insurers to track progress to that goal “to improve health outcomes, prevent hospital readmission, ensure patient safety and reduce medical errors, and implement wellness and health promotion activities.” It also required Kathleen Sebelius “to promulgate regulations that provide criteria for determining reimbursement structure to improve quality,” in order to complete that transformation.

That was due on March 23, 2012, eighteen months ago this week. So far, HHS hasn’t uttered or written one word about this statutory deadline, which means that insurers have no idea how HHS wants them to go about achieving the outcome-based reimbursement model. It’s not even clear if HHS has any idea at all how to achieve that goal. In fact, it can be assumed at this point, 42 months after ObamaCare passed Congress, that the White House has no idea how to fulfill that pledge....

UPS to drop 15,000 spouses from insurance, cites Obamacare
United Parcel Service Inc. plans to remove thousands of spouses from its medical plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere. The Atlanta-based logistics company points to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as a big reason for the decision, reports Kaiser Health News....

Citing Obamacare, 40,000 Longshoremen Quit the AFL-CIO
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 dissolution of their affiliation, but prominent among them was the AFL-CIO's support of Obamare. ...

Obamacare Will Cost Delta Airlines $100 Million Next Year
Yesterday, I noted ways that some employers are already limiting health benefits for workers because of Obamacare. Today, we have another example: Delta airlines says that the health law will cost the company $38 million directly, and nearly $100 million when all the additional costs are factored in....

The Obamacare Lobbying Bonanza
...More than 30 former administration officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers who worked on the healthcare law have set up shop on K Street since 2010.

Major lobbying firms such as Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, The Glover Park Group, Alston & Bird, BGR Group and Akin Gump can all boast an ObamaCare insider on their lobbying roster — putting them in a prime position to land coveted clients.

…Veterans of the healthcare push are now lobbying for corporate giants such as Delta Airlines, UPS, BP America and Coca-Cola, and for healthcare companies including GlaxoSmithKline, UnitedHealth Group and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

Ultimately, the clients are after one thing: expert help in dealing with the most sweeping overhaul of the country’s healthcare system in decades.

"Healthcare lobbying on K Street is as strong as it ever was, and it's due to the fact that the Affordable Care Act seems to be ever-changing," Adler said. "What's at stake is huge. ... Whenever there's a lot of money at stake, there's a lot of lobbying going on."...

It's Fact, Not Anecdote, That ObamaCare Is Turning Us Into A Part-Time Nation
...Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the ratio of part-time to full-time jobs has completely flipped this year from historical trends. Last year, six full-time jobs were created for every one part time job. This year, only one full-time job is being created for every four new part-time jobs.

The shift to part-time has accelerated over the past several months because of the “look back” provision in ObamaCare that sets the baseline this year for the number of full-time workers a company employs to determine their compliance with the employer pay-or-play mandate.

The administration may have been trying to stop the damage when it announced in July it would delay for a year the reporting requirements for the health law’s employer mandate – the requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide health coverage that is acceptable to the government or pay a fine of $2,000 to $3,000 per employee per year.

The statute is very clear that the employer mandate is to take effect on January 1, 2014, not a year later as the White House now has directed. The House of Representatives was more than happy to give the administration legal authority to delay the employer mandate and passed legislation in July to make the delay legal. But, astonishingly, the president vowed to veto the legislation if it were to reach his desk – which it will not because Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid will not bring it up for a vote. The president would rather rewrite the law by administrative edict instead of following the Constitutional route of asking Congress to change it....

White House Considers Awarding Obamacare Subsidies, Intended For The Uninsured, To Labor Unions
...The issue at hand is the way Obamacare affects multi-employer health plans, also known as Taft-Hartley plans. These plans consist of employer-sponsored health insurance that is arranged between a labor union in a particular industry, such as restaurants, and small employers in that sector. Approximately 20 million workers in the United States are covered under such arrangements, including 800,000 of the 1.3 million members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, whose leader, Joseph Hansen, signed the letter I described above.

Workers with employer-sponsored coverage don’t qualify for subsidized coverage on Obamacare’s insurance exchanges. Those subsidies are designed for low-income people who aren’t offered coverage from their employers, and have to shop for insurance on their own. But the labor union leaders want those subsidies to also apply to their members with employer-sponsored coverage, even though they already get those benefits tax-free due to the employer tax exclusion for health insurance....

...Now, according to Rachana Dixit of InsideHealthPolicy, the administration is “working on regulations to address the issue” that people covered under Taft-Hartley plans aren’t eligible for subsidies. But it’s not an “issue” in the sense of being a glitch or a mistake; union leaders are seeking special treatment, and additional taxpayer subsidies, that other participants in employer-sponsored coverage don’t get....