Over­all, the report asserts, ​“with­out smart fix­es, the [Afford­able Care Act] threat­ens the mid­dle class with high­er pre­mi­ums, loss of hours, and a shift to part-time work and less com­pre­hen­sive coverage.”

The 12-page report, ​“ The Irony of Oba­macare: Mak­ing Inequal­i­ty Worse ,” began cir­cu­lat­ing last week to its pri­ma­ry audi­ence of some 270,000 Unite Here mem­bers. It large­ly focus­es on the law’s neg­a­tive future impact on Unite Here’s exist­ing joint labor-man­age­ment health­care plans, also known as ​“Taft-Hart­ley plans,” warn­ing that union mem­bers may lose their exist­ing insur­ance cov­er­age and be forced to buy more expen­sive insur­ance elsewhere.

Since Pres­i­dent Oba­ma signed the Afford­able Care Act (ACA) into law in 2010, unions say they have plead­ed with the White House dozens of times to make labor-friend­ly changes to the law. With the dead­line to sign up for 2014 cov­er­age loom­ing, hos­pi­tal­i­ty union Unite Here has pro­duced a sting­ing new report on the fail­ure of the White House and con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats to face Obamacare’s numer­ous problems.

After the report began cir­cu­lat­ing, con­ser­v­a­tive media out­lets seized on it as evi­dence that unions are broad­ly opposed to Obamacare.

Not so, Unite Here Pres­i­dent Dou­glas ​“D” Tay­lor tells In These Times. Some fea­tures of the law — par­ents’ abil­i­ty, for exam­ple, to keep their adult chil­dren on fam­i­ly med­ical plans till age 26 — make sense, he says. Like­wise, the aspect that pro­tects con­sumers with expen­sive pre-exist­ing med­ical prob­lems from los­ing insur­ance cov­er­age is nec­es­sary and overdue.

​“Every­body knows there are good parts of it. But there are also parts that need to be fixed,” he says.

What infu­ri­ates union lead­ers, Tay­lor con­tin­ues, is the White House­’s refusal to tack­le those vital changes—espe­cial­ly those that would ensure the con­tin­ued avail­abil­i­ty of Taft-Hart­ley health plans for union mem­bers. Such plans, which are typ­i­cal­ly fund­ed by finan­cial con­tri­bu­tions from both employ­ers and work­ers, are the prin­ci­pal source of insur­ance cov­er­age for some 20 mil­lion union mem­bers nation­wide, labor lead­ers say. But under the ACA, employ­ers face no sig­nif­i­cant penal­ties for aban­don­ing Taft-Hart­ley cov­er­age for their work­ers, thus imper­il­ing exist­ing sys­tems of insur­ance that are val­ued by unions and their members.

Fur­ther­more, Unite Here asserts, low-income employ­ees can only get gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for insur­ance if they aban­don their exist­ing plans to buy new ones on the pub­lic exchanges. And lead­ers fear the ensu­ing exo­dus may ulti­mate­ly doom the avail­abil­i­ty of Taft-Hart­ley plans for all employ­ees. Yet Oba­ma, Unite Here offi­cials say, has con­tin­ued to balk.

​“In the three years since ACA was passed, we met with the White House 46 times” to press the case for spe­cif­ic changes to the law, Tay­lor says. ​“We met with Health and Human Ser­vices Depart­ment 12 times. And we met with the Depart­ment of Labor and the IRS.”

But their hard work, he says, did not come to fruition. ​“After you meet 46 times and noth­ing hap­pens, you get the point,” Tay­lor says, that the White House does not intend to aid labor unions in their efforts to pro­tect the Taft-Hart­ley plans.

​“There is no point in talk­ing to this admin­is­tra­tion any­more. The White House has been bla­tant­ly dis­hon­est,” Tay­lor argues. ​“We took the pres­i­dent at his word when he said that if you like your cur­rent health plan, you could keep it.”

These frus­tra­tions have not been a secret. Last year, Tay­lor was one of three major union lead­ers who signed an open let­ter to Con­gress that urged Con­gress to make the changes the exec­u­tive admin­is­tra­tion wouldn’t.

But so far, Tay­lor reports, the push hasn’t been suc­cess­ful. ​“Frankly, the Capi­tol Hill Democ­rats aren’t any bet­ter,” than the White House, he says. ​“We all know that the Repub­li­cans want to destroy ACA, but the Democ­rats don’t want to be hon­est about [its shortcomings].”

Con­gres­sion­al friends of labor are well aware of the issues, accord­ing to Tay­lor, but they’re afraid to force a debate that might unrav­el the entire ACA law. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion is a cli­mate of fear that Democ­rats will lose sup­port in the 2014 midterm elec­tions if crit­i­cism of Oba­macare esca­lates, he says.

In a signed arti­cle in the Huff­in­g­ton Post last week, Tay­lor plead­ed for an ​“an hon­est debate” among law­mak­ers about the short­com­ings of Oba­macare. He also blast­ed Oba­ma and Con­gress for their will­ing­ness to adjust the law to ben­e­fit pow­er­ful cor­po­rate inter­ests while ignor­ing labor union members:

​“Con­gress and the Pres­i­dent have it in their pow­er to fix this prob­lem. The Pres­i­dent has said he will use the ​“pen and phone” to act when Con­gress won’t. Well, he has already used that pen to give Con­gres­sion­al staff an exemp­tion from Oba­macare. He has used a pen to give major cor­po­ra­tions an exemp­tion from pay­ing a fine. He has used his pen to exempt employ­ers with 51 to 100 employ­ees from the law. And he has used his pen to allow cor­po­rate exec­u­tives to keep their gold-plat­ed plans while push­ing many oth­er employ­ees onto part-time work. All we ask is to keep what we have — noth­ing more, noth­ing less.”

These exemp­tions are trou­bling, Tay­lor tells In These Times, because they indi­cate the Oba­ma administration’s will­ing­ness to make ACA changes ben­e­fi­cial to pow­er­ful cor­po­rate inter­ests while insist­ing it can do noth­ing to help union mem­bers. ​“This admin­is­tra­tion and the Democ­rats are more inter­est­ed in help­ing big com­pa­nies,” he says.

And the dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly large advan­tages extend to the behe­moth insur­ance providers, too. ​“Most of the ACA’s $965 bil­lion in sub­si­dies will go direct­ly to com­mer­cial insur­ance com­pa­nies, one of the largest trans­fers of pub­lic wealth to pri­vate hands ever,” Taylor’s report point­ed out.

​“Most peo­ple in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty should be aghast” at this trans­fer of wealth, Tay­lor con­tin­ues, which ben­e­fits ​“the for-prof­it [insur­ance] indus­try that caused so many of the prob­lems in health­care in the first place.”