Health care favoritism

Having initially cast aside their usual view that “from those to whom much is given, much shall be taken away” in battling the tax on Cadillac health insurance plans, government and private sector unions have now won a five-year exemption from that tax for their members in an extraordinary show of political clout.  I have been wondering recently why there hasn’t been a grass-roots revolt against the favoritism shown public sector unions in the various pseudo-stimulus initiatives.  If the unions can get away with this patent injustice towards non-unionized workers, the conundrum only deepens.  (The print version of the New York Times’ article on the deal, by Robert Pear and labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, amusingly delays any mention of the union carve-out for four windy paragraphs while extolling the marvels of health “reform,” and then initially only mentions it in the vaguest of terms: “The changes would lessen and delay the impact of the tax on workers.”  Um, not all workers.  The web version of the article does not bury the lede quite as flagrantly.)