Health Law Dis-Union: SEIU Local Drops Dependent Health Coverage
Just before the holiday break, the Wall Street Journal reported on the decision by SEIU local 1199, which represents home health workers in New York, to drop dependent coverage for more than 6,000 children – a decision made as a direct result of the health care law that the SEIU worked feverishly to support. While the SEIU 1199 health fund previously covered some children up until age 23, a letter from a union official explained that the new law’s costly mandates proved unsustainable for the plan: “New federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26….Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.” In other words, instead of some dependent children having health coverage prior to the law’s enactment, now none will.
Also of note in the article: Because SEIU local 1199 represents home health care workers, the union’s finances were strained as a result of $370 million in cuts to Medicaid reimbursement rates that the state of New York enacted in the past two years. This of course raises another interesting question: If New York is making reimbursement cuts because it can’t afford its Medicaid program now, how will states handle the fiscal impact of an estimated 18 million new enrollees after 2014?