On Friday, we told you about one of the most repugnant elements of ObamaCare: It codifies lawlessness and government-by-whim.
How has it done so? ObamaCare empowered Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Department of Health and Human Services with the unilateral power to issue waivers from the law's mandates and obligations. So far, a total of 1,472 waivers have been granted.
What makes this doubly offensive is that the criteria for awarding waivers and denying waivers — as were recently denied to the states of Oklahoma and Kansas — have never been made public. It's government by the whim of the unelected Secretary of HHS.
Today, we learn that the biggest beneficiaries of the waivers issued by Sebelius and HHS have been President Obama's friends in the big labor unions. The Daily Caller reports that labor unions representing 543,812 union members received waivers. By contrast, private employers with a 69,813 employees received waivers.
Major labor unions were some of the biggest supporters of ObamaCare. But, they've had to seek special exemption in the form of waivers to avoid the harmful consequences of the law. If they didn't, many would find themselves in a similar position to New York's SEIU Local 1199, which had to drop coverage of children for the more than 30,000 home-attendant workers.
This is the chaos of ObamaCare. This is the lawlessness of ObamaCare. A society built on the rule of law can't accept a system of government-by-whim designed to reward the President's friends and supporters.
The rule of law must be restored, and that can't be done without repealing ObamaCare.