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Bob Graham is executive editor at Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.

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Gov. Ed Rendell’s recent deal with unionized employees of Philadelphia’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, brokered to end a paralyzing transit strike in the City of Brotherly Love, includes a provision protecting the union’s workers from increases to their health insurance costs caused by national health care reform, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Rendell seems like the last person in the world who would accept this provision. It flies in the face of everything he’s promoted.

The Democratic governor has worked non-stop to promote health care in Pennsylvania, fighting Senate Republicans over and over about expanding AdultBasic, Pennsylvania ABC and other health insurance programs to expand coverage to the state’s uninsured residents. He was rumored for months to have been pushing his reform packages so he could land a gig as U.S. health secretary had Hillary Clinton won the presidency. But when her candidacy failed, he kept pushing and pushing.

Now, President Barack Obama and other Democrats appear to be close to passing legislation that would advance Rendell’s belief in covering all of the uninsured in Pennsylvania and the U.S. much further, and he’s giving a key union an out if their coverage costs increase.

Rendell decision may upset his Democratic Party buddies, because it is the best proof yet that federal health care reform is going increase our coverage costs.