Family Members Had to Pay Union Dues for Taking Care of Family Members
President Biden 
Joe BidenBiden hails UN vote: 'Lays blank Putin'southward isolation' Overnight Defense & National Security — Usa tries to turn down the dial on Russia Johns Hopkins doc says children demand to get vaccinated against COVID-19 MORE promised to be the virtually pro-matrimony president in history. And he'southward proving loyal to that delivery, but at the expense of the seriously sick and disabled.
Biden's Department of Wellness and Human Services (DHS) proposed a new dominion that would permit unions to skim dues from dwelling wellness care workers. Under the proposed rule, DHS would permit diversion of Medicaid payments to third parties, including unions. While this may seem innocuous, it is annihilation but. In fact, this rule would reauthorize what is known as a "dues skim," a scheme that has benefitted unions at the expense of vulnerable Medicaid recipients and their caregivers.
In 2011, the Mackinac Middle was the first organization to discover the redirection of Medicaid payments to labor organizations. In Michigan, the Service Employees International Spousal relationship's (SEIU) local affiliate recognized it could obtain "dues" from dwelling wellness care providers and worked with the state to force-unionize them. Outset, the SEIU lobbied the state to create an agency known as the Michigan Quality Community Intendance Quango that would serve as the putative employer of home wellness intendance providers in Michigan. The SEIU so bargained with that "employer" to unionize these workers. This all happened even though fewer than 20 percent of the afflicted home health care providers voted for the marriage. Many were not fifty-fifty aware that a unionization election had occurred.
As a result, a portion of Medicaid payments meant for covering the costs of dwelling house health care providers — often the family unit members of seriously ill or disabled individuals — was redirected to the SEIU. Past 2012, the SEIU had successfully skimmed over $34 meg in Michigan lonely. After reforms were passed banning dues skim (and after reaffirmed in a election proposal), abode health intendance providers overwhelmingly demonstrated they did not wish to be unionized. In less than a year, SEIU Healthcare Michigan'due south membership savage eighty pct. In other words, when given the choice nigh whether to go a member of a union, only 20 percent of providers decided it was worthwhile.
The consequences of dues skim get even worse on a national calibration. From 2000 to 2017, unions successfully diverted approximately $1.4 billion in Medicaid payments.
There is little justification for these payments. Although DHS claims that allowing these diversionary payments would do good caregivers through better training and education, information technology has presented no prove to back up this claim. What evidence does exist suggests that such arguments are meritless.
The position is also logically inconsistent. If unions had grooming opportunities that would benefit home health care providers, nothing stops them from offering those trainings for a fee. Providers could then make up one's mind whether to spend the funds they receive from Medicaid to enhance their skills past attending these training sessions. This arrangement would be consequent both with the law and marketplace incentives. Instead, DHS has opted for an arrangement that favors coercion and potential fraud.
The applied consequences of permitting dues skimming cannot be understated. The providers from whom payments would exist diverted are often the family members of those with serious illnesses or disabilities. Without this intendance, the sick and disabled would be forced into an institution, likely at greater taxpayer expense. These family unit members sacrifice their time and energy and are lightly compensated primarily through Medicaid payments.
Despite this, some unions have used dues skim to divert payments while providing little, if any, tangible benefits to providers or Medicaid recipients. But in this situation, unions have piddling to offering either party, since home health care providers are non employed by an outside bureau, but rather, their patients. They work from either their own homes or the homes of their ill and disabled relatives. They manage their own working conditions and hours, based on the needs of their patient. Unions play no representational role in these areas — the traditional purpose of collective bargaining.
DHS should not reinstate ante skim through administrative fiat. Doing so would reduce the funds available to assist the sick and disabled, increase the shortage of domicile health intendance workers and straight Medicaid payments away from their intended purpose. Funds paid to caregivers should be used to support their efforts to care for the sick and disabled, not for favored political causes.
Steve Delie is the director of labor policy at the Mackinac Middle for Public Policy in Midland, Mich.
Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/574821-a-union-dues-skim-from-home-health-care-workers-will-hurt-the-most-vulnerable
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