SEIU’s Andy Stern Joins For-Profit Company to Make Piles of Cash for Big Business

SEIU's Andy Stern

Andy Stern, SEIU’s President Emeritus, has joined the board of yet another for-profit corporation.

Stern, who already serves on the board of SIGA Technologies (a pharmaceutical company controlled by billionaire Ron Perelman), recently joined the Advisory Board of “BeneStream,” a start-up venture headquartered in New York. 

BeneStream pledges to deliver "piles of money" to large corporations by helping them push their low-wage workers onto the taxpayer-funded Medicaid rolls.

What does BeneStream do?

Under Obamacare, large companies will be required to provide health insurance to all of their employees beginning in 2015. That costs money, right? Fortunately for the Bosses, there’s a loophole built into the law. If workers happen to sign up for Medicaid, then companies are no longer on the hook for their health insurance.

That’s where BeneStream comes in. 

Stern's company says it’ll save companies buckets of money for the Bosses by helping them identify low-wage workers on their payrolls and then signing them up for taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefits. Here's an excerpt from BeneStream's website:

And here's what BeneStream’s CEO says on a slick video featured on the company's website:

The one solution that’ll save you a pile of money as an employer is the BeneStream solution… We work with employers that have 50 or more employees to screen their low-income workforce for Medicaid and then enroll those people in Medicaid when we can, saving employers the cost of insurance… The employer wins because they save the cost of insuring someone...

Stern serves on BeneStream’s five-member Advisory Board with people like Kevin Hill, a fatcat insurance exec at companies like Oxford Health, CheckpointHR, HealthPlanOne, and United Healthcare. 

According to a press report, BeneStream recently raised "$1.58 million from angel investors.” 

So how much is SEIU’s President Emeritus pocketing for pimping for BeneStream?

Not clear. But when Stern first joined SIGA’s board in 2012, he took home 35,000 stock options and $116,094 in cash.