Over at the Washington Examiner, Kevin Mooney has done an excellent job demonstrating the pro-union intent of HR3200, the House of Representatives’ health care “reform” bill.  Like everything that comes from this President and this Congress, its primary aim is the growth of power of unions.

I’ve done a little digging into the bill myself, using some guidance from Mr. Mooney’s article, and found the following (much of which is duplicative of the article):

Section 123 creates a “Health Benefits Advisory Committee to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced, and premium plans."  The panel will contain 9 members who are not Federal employees but are appointed by the President, 9 members who are not Federal employees and who are appointed by the Comptroller General of the United States, and an unspecified even number (not to exceed 8) Federal employees appointed by the president.  In addition to the obvious political interference caused by up to 17 panel menbers appointed by the President, the Committee also must include a representative of “labor", i.e. a labor union.  Oh, it must also include at least one practicing physician.  Phew. These are the people who will decide what must be in your health insurance plan.

Similarly, Section 2261 creates  the “Advisory Committee on Health Workforce Evaluation and Assessment” which will conduct something like a census of the health care work force.  Anyone want to take a guess what the purpose of that is?  How about giving the union bosses the information needed to try to unionize one of the largest non-unionized sectors of the workforce (maybe the single largest)?  It’s no coincidence that we see this type of thing from the same group that wants to take over control of the actual census.  Of course, this Committee must include at least one representative of labor unions even though there is not only no reason for this entire provision but there is no reason other than trying to help unions grow to insist on union membership on the panel.

Section 2531 creates a multi-million dollar grant program to train nurses.  However, for an entity to be eligible for a grant it must be “jointly administered by a health care employer and a labor union".  You get that?  If you run a hospital, you can only get grant money to train nurses if you bring in labor unions to help you run the place.  Any guess how that would work out for your bottom line?

In Kevin Mooney’s article, the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner says that some may be “overstating the case concerning union appointees and their potential influence on health care."  And while I usually agree with Tanner, I think he’s being rather naive given the source of this legislation.  The odds that legislation coming from this Congress with the support of this President is not intentionally designed to boost the power and wealth of unions regardless of the cost to society, to the health care system, or to anyone else except Democrats, is vanishingly small.