About Me 0002: Affiliate Making Money

You remember how ObamaCare was all about making health care more affordable and protecting the most vulnerable, right?

And, surely you remember how much money and resources (i.e., members’ dues) the purple behemoth known as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put into the fight for ObamaCare—even going so far as (allegedly) beating Kenneth Gladney at a St. Louis town hall meeting.

Heck, it was SEIU’s then president Andy Stern who pushed for the tactic known as “demon pass” that gave us final passage of ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act.

Well, somehow we missed this last week:

One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements.

The fund is administered by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. Union officials said the state compelled the fund to start buying coverage from a third party, which increased premiums by 60%. State health officials denied forcing the union fund to make the switch, saying the fund had been struggling financially even before the switch to third-party coverage.

The fund informed its members late last month that their dependents will no longer be covered as of Jan. 1, 2011. Currently about 6,000 children are covered by the benefit fund, some until age 23.

The union fund faced a “dramatic shortfall” between what employers contributed to the fund and the premiums charged by its insurance provider, Fidelis Care, according to Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU. The union fund pools contributions from several home-care agencies and then buys insurance from Fidelis.

Of course, when it comes to the SEIU, it must be someone else’s fault.

The union said in a statement that the state required the fund to participate in a new program — the Family Health Plus Buy-In Program — beginning in 2008. The union said it expected that by joining the program, many of its members would qualify for state assistance for health-insurance coverage. “Instead they raised insurance rate increases without any increase in funding, and then cut Medicaid funding to the same workers nine times in the last three years,” the union said in a statement.

And, more importantly, the union expects someone else to pay for their mistakes lobbying efforts.

“We hope the state of New York will do the right thing and provide the funding necessary for this most vulnerable population of direct caregivers,” the union said in a statement.

Karma. It has such a nice ring to it. Yet, it seems just too kind of a word to describe the SEIU’s dilemma.

It’s sort of like the SEIU made a big batch of Kool Aid, and now the members’ kids are the only ones drinking it.

[There's only so many waivers one can get from reality.]

[h/t Big Dog]

__________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

X-posted.

For more news & views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com

A milestone reached by mobile music discovery service Shazam: the company says it has come good on its promise and reached 100,000 users, picking up 25 million in the last six months alone.

The figures do not break out how many of those are active users, as opposed to those who have dipped into the service once and never again.

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But there is evidence that it is making a good return on those who do manage to stay for longer: the original, core service of Shazam lets users enter a snippet of music into an app, or via a mobile website - the service is available via Android, BlackBerry, BREW, iPhone, iPad, J2ME, Symbian and Windows - which Shazam then uses to find the full track. In January Shazam said it was referring 260,000 users to affiliate sites like iTunes on a daily basis as a result of those searches.

Although Shazam has been around for a decade already, it is only in the last few years, with the takeoff in mobile data and smartphone usage, that the service has really come into its own.

This year, Shazam has been moving well beyond its music roots, using the “audio fingerprint” as a way of unlocking other kinds of content. Shazam has partnered with brands in marketing campaigns, and with television shows from the likes of NBC (NYSE: GE) and HBO, to let users “Shazam” clips from ad campaigns and programs to be led to further content: along the lines of an aural version of QR codes.

It has also been trying to further exploit its market footprint by also selling advertising real estate around its own apps: earlier this month it launched expanding ad services, selling the entirety of its inventory to Universal Music until the middle of January, 2011.

While Shazam announced it was profitable back in October 2009, it is still mulling what might be the next step. The company previously told paidContent that it would consider an IPO, more recently Will Mills, head of music and content for Shazam said the company wasn’t focussing on who would buy the company.

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Wednesday, 8 December 2010

Affiliate Making Money

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