Another benefit of Obamacare you probably didn't know about

Demonstrators cheer outside the Supreme Court building after the Court upheld nationwide premium subsisides under Obamacare in June.Richard Mayhew, the pseudonymous health insurance expert blogging at balloon-juice.com (and a must-read on insurance issues), points us to a subtle benefit provided to unionized workers by the Affordable Care Act: it gives them more leverage in contract negotiations with employers.

That's because it gives employees a backstop against the employers' withdrawal of health insurance during a strike.

Here's how that works. The goal of each side in a strike is to impose the maximum economic hardship on the other. For employers, it's the loss of business; for employees,…