Waiver-mania! The ever-expanding Obamacare escapee list By Michelle Malkin ⢠November 14, 2010 10:26 AM Let us briefly review the rapidly growing rolls of companies, unions, and states bursting out of the Obamacare escape hatch. In early September, I noted the push by Obamacare promoter and Democrat Rep. Ron Wyden for a special state waiver from the very federal mandate he advocated for everyone else. A few weeks later, McDonaldâs finagled its own Obamacare waiver after warning federal regulators that it could be forced to drop its affordable health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 restaurant workers unless it got a pass. In early October, the Obama administration announced it had granted waivers not only to McDonaldâs, but also to several other firms and labor unions. Now comes word that Torquemada HHS Secretay Kathleen Sebelius has approved a whopping 111 waivers for businesses of all sizes, along with more unions and other providers of health insurance. The escapees include employers of many low-wage and part-time workers whose health insurance plans would otherwise be dropped, including Darden Restaurants â the parent company of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster and other chains, which employ some 34,000 people. Also on the list: Carlson Restaurants, which owns T.G.I. Fridayâs, and hair salon chain Regis Corp: Also on the list: Dish Networks and more. At this point, the better question is: Who wonât be on the list after the Obamacare central planners fully acknowledge the destructive consequences of their schemes? The list of most recently approved refugees is here. Make no mistake: Team Obama isnât granting the waivers out of bleeding-heart compassion for the affected workers, but out of a panicked urgency to avoid a public relations disaster. As Iâve boiled it down before: Old Democrat promise: Everyone gets to keep their health insurance. New Democrat promise: You can keep your health insuranceâ¦if you BEG hard enough for an Obamacare waiver. Yep: The only way for hundreds of thousands of workers to keep their health insurance is to exempt them from the government-imposed âfix.â The Soros monkeys are attacking conservative Obamacare critics as âRepublican repeal mongersâ â even as the Obama administration concedes failure and continues to approve temporary repeals of the federal mandates to company after company after union after union. Waiver-mania also comes on the heels of Democratsâ own push to repeal the onerous 1099 provisions: Guess we are all ârepeal mongersâ now, eh?
this is a fricken national tragedy. Our leaders have ignored substance in favor of headlines. Its better to fail than pass an abortion. Obama wanted a success and Baucus reid and pelosi told him this was the shit he had to accept because the insurance companies and drug companies own congress. this is a so disgusting.