NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | May 19, 2017 | PAGE 3
...The end of Obamacare?
From Page 1
a variety of taxes — on medical
equipment manufacturers, tan-
ning salons (because tanning
beds cause cancer), and most
importantly, by extending the
Medicare payroll tax to high in-
come taxpayers and to “un-
earned” (investment) income.
The most broadly controversial
tax — the so-called “Cadillac”
tax on expensive employer-pro-
vided health insurance plans that
cover many union members—
has yet to be implemented be-
cause Congress voted in 2015 to
delay it to 2020.
In theory, the regulated state-
level insurance exchanges are
supposed to restrain increases in
insurance premiums — because
insurance companies compete on
price for standardized insurance
products, and because the ACA
says at least 90 percent of pre-
mium dollars must go to health
care, with only 10 percent for in-
surance company administration,
tax, and profit. Insurance compa-
nies are barred from refusing
coverage to the sick (those with
“pre-existing conditions” in the
industry’s soul-less jargon), but
in turn, they benefit from the “in-
dividual mandate” — the re-
quirement that all the healthy
purchase insurance under pain of
tax penalty.
In practice, it didn’t work as
well as predicted: Too many
healthy people remained unin-
sured, because the tax penalty
wasn’t draconian enough and/or
the subsidies weren’t rich
enough. And maybe more im-
portantly, the exchanges did
nothing to restrain the prices
charged by hospitals or other
health providers. The fact that
premiums continued to rise led
some people to conclude that
Obamacare is a failure, over-
looking the fact that an esti-
mated 20 million more people
are now insured because of it.
What does the American
Health Care Act do to all of
that? Here are some highlights:
It starves off the most effective part of
the ACA. Medicaid would be converted
from a federal guarantee to a state block
grant, with funds ratcheted down every
time someone drops off the Medicaid rolls.
It gives up most of the revenue. AHCA
keeps the Cadillac tax (though delaying it
to 2025), but repeals the Medicare tax on
high-income taxpayers and the medical
equipment manufacturers.
It mucks up the subsidy/penalty
structure. In Obamacare, subsidies are
based on income, and the least-income
get the most subsidy. That makes sense,
since the point is to make it affordable
enough so people buy insurance who
otherwise wouldn’t. AHCA changes
subsidies to be based on age, with older
people getting more. That will result in
healthy lower-income young people
going without, which would destabilize
the insurance market. Making matters
worse, AHCA replaces the already-
ineffective tax penalty with something
worse: a rule letting insurance companies
charge 30 percent extra to those who’ve
gone without insurance. Think about that:
If you go without because insurance is
unaffordable, a policy making it even less
affordable to get back on will guarantee
you stay uninsured … until you’re sick.
It brings back ‘pre-existing conditions.’
ACA says insurers can’t refuse coverage to
those with pre-existing conditions, but
AHCA says states could let insurers charge
them more.
AHCA passed May 4 by 217-
213, with no hearing, no analysis
from the Congressional Budget
Office, and no support from De-
mocrats. The bill’s fate in the
U.S. Senate is uncertain. Thanks
to the filibuster rule, if the Sen-
ate’s 48-member Democratic
caucus sticks together, it could
defeat AHCA or any other bill to
undo the ACA, or at least engage
in history-making debate if Re-
publicans are prepared to duke it
out on the Senate floor.
— Don McIntosh
820 SW Second Ave., Suite 200, Portland, OR 97204
www.tcnf.legal
How your member
of Congress voted
FOR: Oregon Republican Greg Walden
AGAINST: Washington Republican Jaime
Herrera-Beutler; Oregon Democrats Earl
Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici, Peter
DeFazio, and Kurt Schrader.
UNION DEMOCRACY
At the May 9 meeting of OPEIU Local 11, President Barbara Melton (left)
administers the oath of office to officers Maureen Colvin, Lori Ricketts,
Kim King, Sandra Dowling, Debi Turk and Doug Luse.
Colvin wins top job at Local 11
In mail ballots counted May
3, Maureen Colvin won elec-
tion to a three-year term as
executive secretary-treasurer
of 1,900-member Office and
Professional Employees In-
ternational Union (OPEIU)
Local 11. Colvin has worked
as a union rep at Local 11
since 2007, and had been
serving as interim executive
secretary-treasurer since her
predecessor Mike Richards
retired at the end of 2016. Ex-
ecutive secretary-treasurer is
the local’s top elected office,
and a full-time salaried posi-
tion responsible for oversee-
ing a staff of three at Local
11’s Vancouver headquarters.
Colvin outpolled fellow
long-time business rep Rick
Wilson 125 to 66 to win the
election. Colvin said she ex-
pects Wilson will continue as
a union business rep.
Local 11 represents 617
workers at Northwest Natu-
ral, 258 at Clark County and
153 at the City of Vancouver,
plus workers at Columbia
River Mental Health and Co-
lumbia Wellness, and office
workers at local unions and
union-associated businesses
in Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana and Utah.
Over the next three years,
Colvin said she hopes to get
more members involved, par-
ticularly as the union con-
tends with the threat of “right-
to-work” via a case that’s
Maureen Colvin
expected to go before the U.S.
Supreme Court.
She’ll also be responsible
for renegotiating the current
Northwest Natural contract,
together with Wilson, the Lo-
cal 11 rep assigned to the
company. That contract ex-
pires November 2019.
Except for executive secre-
tary-treasurer, other expiring
union offices were filled by
nominees who were unop-
posed:
■ Vice President: Doug Luse
■ Recording Secretary: Debi Turk
■ Trustee: Kim King
■ Executive Board: Sandi Dowling, at-
large seat; Chuck Strange, public
employee seat; Lori Ricketts, utility seat
Two positions received no
nominations and remain va-
cant: sergeant-at-arms, and an
at-large executive board seat.