Can someone explain the Subsidy that the tea party folks don't want

[Heather MC]

it was my understanding that with the ACA Congress and Senate, and The President, etc have to go to the open market for health care

What is the Subsidy for?

[kelly1mm]

1. Congress and their staff would get 75% of their premium covered. They usually would have $0

subsidy as they are over 400% of the poverty line.

That is it in a nutshell.

[Heather MC]

2. Ok so when they say they don't want the subsidy because they want to save the tax payers money

what they really want is to go back to the way it is where they don't pay anything and we pay it all for them? is that correct?

Their double speak is hard to follow sometimes

[kelly1mm]

4. Not really. They would not go back to 'regular' federal employee insurance (BTW, not free, they

paid the same as any other government employee) as the ACA specifically said that congress and their staffs had to get insurance from the exchanges. This was a 'poison pill' to try and get the ACA not to pass. Why you may ask? Well, for various reasons, people who do not qualify for subsidies generally will not want to get insurance on the exchanges. There are no subsidies for those making 400%+ of the FPL (about 64k for a married couple). Thus, all congressmembers and the vast majority of their staff would get no subsidies. So, basically, what this provision did was make congreessmembers and their staffs pay the full cost of their health insurance.

Obviously, this did not go over well with congreesmembers staffs as they basically will have to pay 5k-10k more for their health insurance and so there was a deal made for them to get 75% of their health insurance premiums paid.

However, this is really just politics. The optics of getting a deal for congrees/staff that is not available to others does not poll well. That is why they are trying to cram it down our throats.

[Heather MC]

6. Ok so if the ACA passed anyway, what would be so wrong with giving them that one concession

and allowing them to not get the subsidy?

[kelly1mm]

7. well, other than it being totally unfair to their staffs, not much. I fully expected that JUST

that provision would be the R's last offer as if the Senate said no the optics would have been terrible. But the R's went the conference route (not a terrible strategic position given the box they are in) and decided not to offer up congress/staff as the sacrificial lamb to the tea party.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Lots of staff are NOT 400% over poverty line. Ex. mail room people work hard for little pay.

Staff are feeling that their GOP threw them under the bus.

[kelly1mm]

5. True. Some (I don't know the #/%) would be under 400% of FPL. nt