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Congress and staff now exempt from Obamacare.
Posted: Aug 2, 2013
nm
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I would be IF it were true. It is not and COULD not be. - Your source lied. Flat out. The truth is both
[ In Reply To ..]irritatingly more of the usual Congressional infighting and tiresome bureaucratic means of dealing with the mess they were handed. Since you will want to know the truth, this if for you from the Washington Post, which specializes on reporting on Congress:
No, Congress isnât trying to exempt itself from Obamacare
By Ezra Klein, Published: April 25 at 8:50 am
Thereâs a Politico story making the rounds that says that members of Congress are engaged in secret, sensitive negotiations to exempt themselves and their staffs from Obamacare.
Well, they were secret, anyway.
Obama signs his health-care reform bill into law. (Marvin Joseph-Washington Post)
Obama signs his health-care reform bill into law. (Marvin Joseph-Washington Post)
The story has blown up on Twitter. âUnbelievable,â tweets TPMâs Brian Beutler. âFlat out incredible,â says Politicoâs Ben White. âObamacare for thee, but not for me,â snarks Ben Domenech. âTwo thumbs way, way down,â says Richard Roeper. (Okay, I made the last one up).
If this sounds unbelievable, itâs because it is. Thereâs no effort to âexemptâ Congress from Obamacare. No matter how this shakes out, Congress will have to follow the law, just like everyone else does.
Based on conversations Iâve had with a number of the staffs involved in these talks, the actual issue here is far less interesting, and far less explosive, than an exemption. Rather, a Republican amendment meant to embarrass Democrats and a too-clever-by-half Democratic response has possibly created a problem in which the federal government canât make its normal contribution to the insurance premiums of congressional staffers.
Maybe.
See? This is getting boring already.
Hereâs how it happened: Back during the Affordable Care Act negotiations, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed an amendment forcing all members of Congress and all of their staffs to enter the exchanges. The purpose of the amendment was to embarrass the Democrats. But in a bit of jujitsu of which they were inordinately proud, Democrats instead embraced the amendment and added it to the law. Hereâs the relevant text:
The only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are â (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).
Letâs stop for a moment here and explain why this is unusual. Large employers â defined in the law as employers with more than 100 employees â arenât allowed onto the insurance exchanges until 2017, and only then if a state makes an affirmative decision to let them in.
But the federal government is the largest employer in the country. So Grassleyâs amendment means that the largest employer in the country is required to put some of its employees â the ones working for Congress â on the exchanges. But the exchanges donât have any procedures for handling premium contributions for large employers.
Thatâs where the problem comes in. This was an offhand amendment that was supposed to be rejected. Itâs not clear that the federal government has the authority to pay for congressional staffers on the exchanges, the way it pays for them now in the federal benefits program. That could lead to a lot of staffers quitting Congress because they canât afford to shoulder 100 percent of their premiums. (Thereâs also a smaller issue related to how retiree benefits might be calculated. But Iâm only willing to go so far into the weeds here.)
Youâll notice a lot of hedged language here: âIfsâ and âcouldsâ. The reason is that the Office of Personnel Management â which is the agency that actually manages the federal governmentâs benefits â hasnât ruled on their interpretation of the law. So no one is even sure if this will be an issue. As the Politico article notes, some offices, like that of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), interpret the language of the law such that thereâs no problem at all. Others are worried it could be an issue, and are trying to prepare ways around it. The staffs I talked to stressed this worrying was preliminary, and felt the Politico article was jumping the gun. âThis whole Politico story is based on a ruling that hasnât even come down yet,â one griped.
But no one is discussing âexemptingâ congressional staffers from Obamacare. Theyâre discussing creating some method through which the federal government can keep making its current contribution to the health insurance of congressional staffers.
âEven if OPM rules against us,â one staffer said, âitâs inaccurate to imply that any talks are aimed at exempting federal employees from routine mandates of ACA since any talks are about resolving the unique bind that the Grassley amendment puts federal employees in.â
This isnât, in other words, an effort to flee Obamacare. Itâs an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy.
I'm not. It's being reported everywhere. Gypsies, - tramps and thieves.
[ In Reply To ..]nm
By "everywhere" do you mean Faux News? No wonder - no one has a clue. nm
[ In Reply To ..]xx
What are you even talking about? So many lies - about this program. sm
[ In Reply To ..]EVERYONE IS EXEMPT WHO HAS INSURANCE THROUGH THEIR JOB OR THEIR OWN POLICY THEY WANT TO KEEP. Not a single American is going to be "forced" to buy insurance who already has it. However, for those of us who don't have insurance, we can buy it on an exchange and based on income, a federal subsidy will be available, paid directly to the insurance company. The only thing this does is make affordable insurance available to the uninsured.
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