Congress Exempts Itself From Obamacare
The Politico website broke the story Thursday morning that Congressional leaders were in hush-hush talks to exempt themselves and their staff from the wonders of ObamaCare. The story succeeded in blowing up the talks, but there’s a bigger story here about Congressional intentions that is worth telling.
House Speaker John Boehner quickly took to Twitter after the Politico story appeared, saying that he’s not “sneaking any language into bills to solve” a problem for Democrats. He added that full repeal of the law is “the solution to this & other ObamaCare nightmares.”
We’re told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer initiated the discussions. Mr. Reid now says he’s not trying to exempt anyone from the law. Mr. Hoyer’s spokesman says only that the Maryland Democrat wants the law to be “workable for everyone.”
Mr. Reid’s office says he merely wants to ensure that the generous subsidies in the current federal-employee health plan can continue to flow to Congressional staff once they are required to obtain coverage via ObamaCare’s new insurance exchanges. Since insurance companies are referring to the ObamaCare policies that will be offered on exchanges as “Medicaid plus,” you can see why Congress wants to protect its own.
The larger truth here is that this story goes back to 2009, when Democrats who passed ObamaCare tried repeatedly to exempt themselves or their key aides. Their problem was Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who for years has maintained the heretical belief that politicians ought to obey the laws they write for everyone else. In 1995, he sponsored the Congressional Accountability Act, which for the first time applied to Congress various civil rights, employment and labor laws that the politicians had imposed on the rest of the country.
In September 2009, Mr. Grassley thought he had succeeded in doing the same for health care when the Senate Finance Committee approved his amendment to require Members of Congress and staff to obtain insurance via the new ObamaCare exchanges. But when Mr. Reid brought the bill to the floor that December, its language had mysteriously changed to exempt those Congressional aides who work for committees and party leaders.
In March 2010 Mr. Grassley tried again to apply the law to all Congressional personnel and to White House officials. His amendment received every Republican vote but it was defeated with 55 Democrats (plus Socialist Bernie Sanders) voting no. However, thanks to Mr. Grassley’s earlier success, the law still covered Members of Congress and some of their aides—hence their latest effort to wiggle out of the ObamaCare mandates.
In 2010 Mr. Grassley created enough of a political headache that Mr. Obama was compelled to say that he would personally join a new insurance exchange. This was an empty gesture since the President has no need for health insurance. He has a team of people devoted to his health and surely no one asks him to present a card to receive treatment.
Congress will eventually find some way to protect itself, but its subterranean scrambling to do so exposes one of ObamaCare’s greatest deceits: That if you like the insurance you have, you’ll be able to keep it. Even the people who wrote the law don’t believe it.
This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
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When are we going to stand up and take our country back? It is past time to stop talking and take action. These liars and thieves need to be impeached from office and be held accountable for the crimes they have committed and have allowed to happen. Think about it: treason, theft of goods & services, intentional violations of our Constitution, gun running that resulted in murder, failure to properly protect Americans @ our embassy which again resulted in murder of our people, special appointments of “friends” and “donors” to high political offices….the list goes on and on. We better grow the balls to stop this deceit or just lay down and let them do as they want. We are either part of the solution or we are part of the problem. I choose to be part of the honest solution.
Count me in.
Amazing! That picture of Reid says it all; how ignorant his and Obama’s constituents can be-electing these fools as our “superiors.” No wonder they don’t “work for the people” anymore.
This whole situation is analogous to the owner spoiling his dinner and finding it good enough to throw out back to the dogs.
And, back to Reid’s picture. A narcissist, child mentality, shakes his own hand. He can’t even smile. Just projecting bitterness off onto those he disapproves of b/c they don’t agree w/ him 100% of the time.
Yes, I’m sounding quite bitter right now, that’s b/c those that can’t control their anger, and spew mindless hatred out at others, eventually infects the masses. And, we “adults” in this country are tired of the crying and whining congressional officials that have to “pass it in order to understand it,” a typical trait of a little 6 year old girl who stands in front of the television (with her limited amount of perspective) and you ask her to please move, you can’t see the TV. And she turns around and says, “But, I can see it just fine, can’t you see it the way I do?”
She doesn’t have the perspective to understand you can’t see through her. She thinks how she perceives visuals is how everyone “should” perceive them. “This” is what we are dealing w/ in Congress. It will never get better. We are experiencing a serious mental condition in this country that has children in adult bodies, like Nancy Pelosi, Reid and Obama, that plot to blame their sibling while they steal the cookie from the jar.
Need some more proof of the ignorance? Women are becoming Womyn b/c they hate man w/ a passion. This is called mental illness.
When you learn to forgive, you let the grudge go. Oh, the irony of liberal supporter MoveOn.org. Take a little of your own medicine, children.
Well, there’s a surprise. I don’t know why I am surprised, they are royalty of course, and we are but the proletariat and they are the ruling class. When is enough, enough? Since when can congress exempt themselves and their low-level employees from the serfdom the rest of us enjoy. Do we still have a constitution?
This is the most ridiculous bunch of crap I have heard of or read in at least the last 30 minutes! They all wrote and passed the bill through and gave it back to obama but now they want us to have it and go broke trying to pay for it and get shitty care while they go on with their private insurance. I don’t think this one’s gonna fly Reid!!You better back off!