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WFB's Ellison Barber: Union Meeting With White House Could Lead to Concessions on Obamacare

September 13, 2013

The Washington Free Beacon's Ellison Barber said recent meetings between high ranking union officials and the White House could lead to concessions on the implementation of Obamacare Friday on "Your World."

At issue are new taxes associated with multi-employer health plans which many fear will cause businesses and policy holders to drop the plans all together, Barber said.

The consternation among the AFL-CIO's 12 million members, Barber noted, could lead the White House to provide additional concessions to the reliably liberal voting bloc:

NEIL CAVUTO: Well you can sort of read in between the lines too. Union leaders fuming this week at their convention in Los Angeles, and right now they're meeting behind closed doors with the president of the United States. Ellison Barber thinks the unions will get some of what they're after. She's with the Washington Free Beacon. You say some but not all. Explain.

ELLISON BARBER: This is not a new push -- a new criticism that the unions have had. They had this criticism of Obamacare over the past couple of months, and they're main problem is with the multi-employer health plans, is that they're worried that because of the new law that there will be new taxes that will make those plans more expensive and consequently cause employers to consider getting red of them entirely and placing their workers in the new health insurance exchanges. So basically I think what is maybe going to come out of this meeting, this meeting is different than any of the other pushes before because we have heard them talk about this and say they want change for the last few months and nothing has happened. This is different though because the AFL-CIO is at a national level. Before you had the lower level state level unions, coming out and criticizing this. But for it to be the national level is huge deal. The AFL-CIO represents 12 million people and they have 57 unions underneath them, so for it to be the national level, I think that's going to be something the Obama administration is going to feel like need to listen to a little more. Because from a political standpoint, 12 million people is an incredibly large voting bloc, and unions are usually a big voter turnout bloc for constituents, for [Democratic] votes as well as fundraising. So I think the fact that this is a national AFL-CIO calling on this and passing a resolution criticizing Obamacare, I think that's going to be very important and I wouldn't be shocked if the administration concedes a little bit to try work with them.