Fix The Affordable Care Act

Affordable Healthcare Benefits

LiUNA believes in access to affordable healthcare benefits for all working people.

LiUNA members, retirees and their families have the advantage of health benefits because our brothers and sisters stood up generations ago and fought for quality healthcare benefits, forming non-profit, labor management healthcare plans to administer benefits. However, harmful and unfair provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are putting these hard-earned benefits at risk.

How the ACA Impacts LiUNA

While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped millions of previously uninsured Americans obtain healthcare coverage, the implementation of the law is placing undue burdens on mutli-employer insurance plans.

All healthcare contributions from our members are negotiated with employers. The ACA undercuts our members’ ability to compete for jobs because it allows cheap, non-union employers to continue escaping responsibility by shifting their employees’ health insurance costs to the taxpayers. This loophole, combined with the law’s high costs, leaves LIUNA members at a significant disadvantage when negotiating for jobs with employers and clearly proves that the unique structure of multi-employer plans has been dramatically misunderstood.

High Costs of ACA on our Members

As the law has been implemented, our plans are facing millions of dollars in new costs —money that otherwise would have gone to providing good healthcare to our members and their families.

For many workers, their employers, and their health and welfare funds, the ACA has become a destructive force and they are now faced with the very real prospect of losing the health benefits that they have worked hard to gain—something that was promised would not happen.

While the Administration has bent over backwards to alleviate some of the law’s burdens on employers, they failed to address some of the problems facing workers—problems that could have been mitigated through regulatory decisions now require legislation to correct.

Temporary Reinsurance Tax

The temporary reinsurance tax alone has cost every LiUNA health and welfare fund $63 per covered life for 2014.

That totals to $45 million straight into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies. That is because the proceeds of this tax are used to subsidize insurance companies offering health plans in the health exchanges. LIUNA’s health and welfare funds are non-profit, non-commercial trusts that are self-funded by LIUNA members who contribute from their own paychecks and cannot by law qualify for these subsidies.

Tax 40% Exise Tax (Cadillac Tax)

Cadillac Tax

Additionally, starting in 2018, many of our plans will be subjected to a 40% excise tax, commonly known as the Cadillac Tax. This tax would be imposed on certain employer-sponsored health plan coverage for LIUNA members on any health care benefits provided to them that exceed a determined amount.

LIUNA supports a repeal of the transitional reinsurance tax and the so-called Cadillac tax.

LIUNA supported HR 3489

Last Congress, LIUNA supported HR 3489, a bipartisan bill that was introduced by Congressman Patrick Tiberi (R-OH) and Dan Lipinski (D-IL). This legislation would have amended the Affordable Care Act by repealing the law’s reinsurance fee. Representative Tiberi and Representative Lipinski are reintroducing this legislation and are calling for a GAO audit on how the money that was paid for 2014 was spent. LIUNA urges members of Congress to cosponsor and/or support this legislation. We urge Members of Congress to cosponsor Representative Guinta’s bill HR 879, or a similar bill that Representative Courtney will be introducing both of which seek to repeal the so-called Cadillac tax.