Please Pass the Schadenfreude. And Sex.

26Nov/100

Please Pass the Schadenfreude. And Sex.

William Jacobson, on a union that did some heavy lifting for ObamaCo (read the whole thing):

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the SEIU Local 1199 health plan will have to drop coverage for children due in substantial part to Obamacare requirements:

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements....

The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23.

The union fund faced a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contributed to the fund and the premiums charged by its insurance provider, Fidelis Care, according to Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU. The union fund pools contributions from several home-care agencies and then buys insurance from Fidelis.

“In addition, new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi wrote in a letter to members Oct. 22. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Actually, I take no joy in Local 1199's problems. But I also find it hard to feel sorry for them, since it was Local 1199's efforts which caused the problems in the first place, for all of us.

They are truly the Kings of Unintended Consequences. That's because they have problems with reason.

The present Pope, however, does not, and Stacy McCain has some interesting Thanksgiving reflections on Humanae Vitae. Am I thankful for sex?