Pay your dues, and you, too, could be exempt from ObamaCare’s rules

Healthcare waivers spread joy to Obama’s friends and campaign contributors but shun average American

- Grace-Marie Turner Thursday, May 26, 2011

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Department of Health and Human Services already has gone through one name change in its 58-year-old history, switching to HHS in 1980 from its original name – the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Now it’s time to rename it again to something that more accurately fits its current mission — something, perhaps, like the Department of Catering to Special Interests.

That’s a logical conclusion after looking at the long list of corporations and labor unions that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has exempted from an early requirement of ObamaCare — one that says health plans must provide at least $750,000 in annual insurance protection to those they cover.

McDonald’s was first in line and now, nearly 1,400 companies, states, and labor unions have received one-year waivers from Sebelius after arguing that the requirement is too expensive and could force them to drop coverage altogether. By the time you read this, the ranks of the specially exempted almost certainly will have grown even larger.

All of which raises a larger question. Why can’t we all get a waiver from ObamaCare? But remember to be guided by this golden rule: Pay your dues, and you, too, could be exempt from ObamaCare’s rules.

One in five of the latest batch of waivers went to two dozen posh restaurants, spas and other businesses in former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district in San Francisco. What a coincidence!

But there are more waves of waivers. Nearly two dozen states have either applied for or have been granted waivers from another ObamaCare rule that forces health insurers operating in their states to comply with strict federal limits on how much they can spend on administration vs. reimbursements for medical bills.

And now we learn that HHS has just issued regulations requiring health insurers to justify to the federal government any premium increases over 10 percent. Get ready for more waiver requests.

But this latest rule includes an interesting exemption: Those who sell Medicare supplemental insurance policies won’t have to limit premium increases to 10 percent a year.

And it’s probably no surprise that the top marketer of this “Medigapâ€