Critics bash Obama health care exemptions

This week the Obama administration quietly exempted 30 employers -- including McDonald's, Jack in the Box and a teachers union -- from new health care rules that the companies said they couldn't afford.

The move came after McDonald's reportedly threatened to pull its stripped-down, limited-benefit coverage for part-time workers if it didn't get a waiver.

Critics say the exemptions show that health care reform may result in people losing their coverage, but the Obama administration says the waivers are just a stopgap measure. By 2014, people not covered by their employers can buy health insurance from marketplaces that are subsidized by tax credits, and large employers will face a fine if they do not adequately cover their employees.

But it doesn't look good for the president to be issuing waivers to companies that threaten skyrocketing premiums under the new law.

"The big political issue here is: The president promised no one would lose the coverage they've got," Robert Laszewski, chief executive officer of consulting company Health Policy and Strategy Associates, told Bloomberg News. "Here we are a month before the election, and these companies represent 1 million people who would lose the coverage they've got."

Obama critic Rush Limbaugh called the waivers "pardons" on his radio show.

Starting next year, insurers will not be allowed to set caps on beneficiaries' benefits any lower than $750,000. Insurers will also be required to spend the vast majority of what they receive in premiums -- 85 percent -- on actual health care.

The benefit cap on the standard McDonald's "mini-med" health care plan is $2,000 per year. In many cases, that would not cover an overnight stay at a hospital. The new health care law has banned this kind of low-benefit insurance.

But the biggest beneficiary of the Obama administration's exemption is the United Federation of Teachers, New York's teachers union, reports the New York Post. The union, which campaigned for Obama in 2008, said it would have trouble insuring its 351,000 members next year if it had to set its benefit cap at $750,000 or more.

"The fact that the largest waiver now belongs to New York teachers union bosses might be funny if the rest of America wasn't stuck complying with the bill's onerous mandates," Patrick Semmens, spokesman for the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, told the paper.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said politics played no part in the union's exemption.

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