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(OL) The New York Times lauded the New York Freelancers Union in a profile last year for providing health insurance to its members and earning a $340 million loan from the Obama administration. Now the Times has had to change its tune, reporting that the Freelancers Union is dropping its health coverage due to increased prices under Obamacare.
The Freelancers Union, which provides health insurance to 25,000 of its members in New York State, is ending an experiment in providing low-cost insurance to independent workers, saying the new landscape created by the federal Affordable Care Act makes it impossible to do so.
The union’s decision came after the state gave the Freelancers Insurance Company, which the union created in 2008, a one-year exemption from the act’s provisions so that it would have time to adjust.
But officials of the union said on Tuesday that to stay in business as an insurance provider, it would have to raise premiums by 14 percent across the board, a direct conflict with its reason for going into the insurance business in the first place. In 2014, monthly premiums for the plans, which were only offered in New York, averaged $502. …
The withdrawal from the insurance business is a substantial retreat for the Freelancers Union, whose founder, Ms. Horowitz, won a MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant in 1999 for her work on behalf of independent workers.
As Mark Hemingway writes for the Weekly Standard:
To repeat, the Obama adminstration worked with and offered financial support to help the union expand affordable insurance coverage to a vulnerable population of workers. But a year later, Obamacare’s onerous coverage mandates caused stiff rate hikes, making it impossible for the union to continue offering coverage.
What was it President Obama said about ‘liking your plan’ again?
