New Health Law Waivers

The Obama Administration has rolled out another 129 waivers to one provision of the new health reform law, with almost half of those new exemptions going to various union groups.

The extra waivers bring the total to 1,168, giving businesses, health plans, unions and others an exemption from a portion of the law that in 2011 requires an annual benefit limit of no less than $750,000.

In other words, these 1,168 waivers allow companies to limit health insurance payouts to less than $750,000 - those annual benefit limits will be phased out by 2014.

The waivers now cover almost three million Americans, but the feds argue that is "less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance.

Almost half of the new round of waivers were given to union health benefit programs, a fact that is sure spur new complaints from health law critics in the Congress, who see these waivers as evidence that the Obama health plan is flawed.

Among the unions that were recently approved for waivers:

Among the non-union recipients of new waivers, those included very average sounding businesses like the Mary Cariola Children's Center in Rochester, NY, the Tumex Corporation of Yuma, Arizona, Belo Tank Xpress and Lexus of Austin.

Links to a list of waivers can be found at the bottom of the page at  http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/files/approved_applications_for_waiver.html.

The new waivers were released on the same day that Congress delved into the details of another part of the Obama health law, as the feds detailed over 1300 grants to companies big and small, designed to help them fund health coverage for early retirees.

Those grants went to well known companies like AT&T and General Electric, and major unions like the United Auto Workers. (See my previous blogs for the list of those recipients entitled, "Health Law Payments").

Members of both parties sternly criticized officials involved in implementing the Obama health law, using a Friday hearing to blast the idea of giving $36 million to GE, which just reported $14 billion in profits, to help insure their early retirees.