Why oh why do we have to follow a law when the lawmakers don't?
Why do the lawmakers get a waiver for the most controversial law on the books, but we, the men on the street, have to follow it, paying more while they carry on with no repercussions?
Why are we standing for this? Democrats and Republicans should be standing together on this....Stop those waivers! If this ACA is good enough for us, then it is good enough for ALL government workers including Congressmen, aides, the president and all government workers.
As a result of an amendment offered by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the Affordable Care Act includes a provision that would require members of Congress (and their personal staffs) to get their insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. The Heritage Foundation has released a very interesting paper that details the legislative history of this provision, and how efforts to adjust it (including by Grassley) slipped away before final passage.
The exchanges are intended for people who currently do not get employer-provided insurance, whereas lawmakers and their staffs previously had about 70 percent of their insurance premiums underwritten by the federal government through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. For lawmakers and their staffs, the loss of employer contributions would have amounted to an unintended pay cut of between $5,000 to $10,000.
The exchanges were not intended for people already with employer-provided insurance. So its already a rather unusual situation. Costs have been imposed on lawmakers and their staffs that did not previously exist, and OPMs rule appears intended to solve that problem instead of exempting them from the health care law.
Under pressure from Congress, the Office of Personnel Management proposed a rule in August, which was finalized in September, saying the federal government could still contribute to health-care premiums.
The issue concerning Congress is complex, but the bottom line is that the administrations action was intended to reduce an unintended burden, not carve out an exception. Rep. Scalise would have been on stronger ground if he had claimed that Congress got special treatment, rather than suggesting that lawmakers and their staffs were not covered by the health care law.
So Congress is not exempt from the ACA
Did Obama exempt 1,200 groups, including Congress, from Obamacare?