About Transparency

The specter of nationalized health care is making strange bedfellows. Democrats have attacked medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies as evil for wanting to stop the government takeover of health care. But at the same time, Democrats are working closely with these industries to push the initiative forward. In exchange for favorable treatment in the plan, health care companies are financing a massive ad campaign to support government care.

Fox News reports that pharmaceutical companies are prepared to spend at least $150 million, and possibly as much as $200 million, to promote the changes President Obama wants. Private insurance companies, which funded ads that helped defeat President Clinton's takeover of the health care industry in 1993 and 1994, have launched ads supporting Mr. Obama this time around. These campaigns will dwarf any opposition efforts to highlight the dangers of the proposed reforms, according to Fox.

You're all corporate lackeys, though.


Hey, what about carrying water for the pharmaceutical companies?



One of the principal reasons that the unions seem so desperate to do Obama's bidding is that they are. And one of the reasons that they are is that their pensions have been raided so often that they're dying. Via Warner Todd Huston, from the WSJ:

In April, the SEIU National Industry Pension Fund—which covers some 101,000 rank-and-file members—announced that its pension has been put into what the feds call “critical status,” or “red zone.” In other words, it lacks the cash to pay promised benefits and may have to cut them. As of 2007, the last year for which it reported results to the government, the fund had 74.4% of the assets needed to pay its benefits.

Thirteen of the bigger plans operated for the Teamsters have, together, a mere 59.3% of reserves necessary to cover obligations. Or consider that 26 pension funds at the food workers union, the UFCW, are at 58.7%. Seven locals at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters fare better at 67%. As a rule of thumb the government considers a fund to be “endangered” at below 80%, and in “critical” status at below 65%, and requires them to come up with a plan to get off probation within a decade.

So, Obama can't necessarily give a controlling interest in a US automaker to everybody to bail out their pensions, but the SEIU and related interests are sure showing their dedication to his policies, in hopes he'll find a way to save theirs, too.

That might turn out to be less likely than they think.

Oh, well. Like Congress, the unions know how to take care of the truly important:

Poor management probably deserves a lot of the blame for the union decline, but the exact causes are a mystery. An even bigger mystery is that the unions do a far better job with funds created for their officers and employees than for mere workers. The SEIU Affiliates, Officers and Employees Pension Plan—which covers the staff and bosses at its locals—was funded as of 2007 at 102.2%. The plan for the folks at SEIU international headquarters was funded at 84.8%.

Union officer benefits are also far more generous than anything dues-paying workers enjoy. Consider again the SEIU, probably the country’s most powerful union. Their officers and employees get a yearly 3% cost of living increase, but SEIU members get none; officers qualify for an early pension at 50 or after more than 30 years of service, but workers can’t retire early with a pension; officers qualify for disability retirement after a year’s service, but workers need 10 years. In the land of union retirement, some workers are more equal than others.