Leaders in the House recently asked the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to provide an estimate of the cost to taxpayers to provide premium tax credits for individuals participating in multiemployer health care plans.
Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee John Kline (R-Minn.) sent the request in a letter to the agencies on Thursday.
Multiemployer health care plans overwhelmingly serve union members, according to Camp and Kline.
“In the more than three years since signing ObamaCare into law, President Obama has unilaterally granted waivers, special deals and delays to unions and other politically-favored friends,” Camp said. “This special treatment is unfair to the American families and individuals who are burdened with higher health costs and losing the insurance they have and like as a result of this law.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act states that only those who purchase insurance through a “qualified health plan” offered in health benefit exchanges may qualify for premium taxpayer credits.
Multiemployer health plans do not meet the definition of a “qualified health plan,” according a recent report by the Congressional Research Service.
Union leaders from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE-HERE recently sent President Barack Obama a letter that said the implementation of the law could risk multiemployer plans and the individuals who are covered by the plans.
Kline and Camp said extending taxpayer subsidies to union health plans, however, would lead to an increase in federal spending.
“According to the Department of Labor there are over 1,800 multiemployer plans that cover some 6.2 million individuals,” Kline and Camp’s letter said. “While not all of these individuals would be eligible for premium tax credits due to income thresholds, potentially millions would qualify. Therefore, the implications for American taxpayers are significant.”
The CBO and JCT were given a deadline of Sept. 19 for a response to Kline and Camp.