Lawmakers, aides may get Obamacare exemption

[antigop]

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/obamacare-exemption-lawmakers-aides-90610.html

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

[bottomofthehill]

1. Sad, but many even on the Hill have no idea what this would mean for them

[Deep13]

2. hypocrits. nt

[NYC_SKP]

3. That's fucked up, especially by Dems.

fuckers, all of them.

[DJ13]

4. “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

[idahoblue]

5. What?

I thought they were already on the Federal insurance plan, like most other federal employees. Employer provided insurance makes them automatically exempt.

[global1]

6. Is This Why Max Baucus Is Retiring?....

Didn't he say something about a 'train wreck' coming with Obamacare?

[frazzled]

7. Read down to Waxman's statement

However, the idea of exempting lawmakers and aides from the exchanges has its detractors, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a key Obamacare architect. Waxman thinks there is confusion about the content of the law. The Affordable Care Act, he said, mandates that the federal government will still subsidize and provide health plans obtained in the exchange. There will be no additional cost to lawmakers and Hill aides, he contends.

“I think the law is pretty clear,” Waxman told POLITICO. “Members and their staffs should get their health insurance through the exchange; the federal government will offer them health insurance coverage that they obtained through the exchanges because we want to get the same health care coverage everybody else has available to them.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/obamacare-exemption-lawmakers-aides-90610.html#ixzz2RRlC8vtw

This seems like typical Politico reporting: present the Boehner aides' framing of the story first, then bury the statement from one of the guys who actually WROTE the law 10 paragraphs down.

[antigop]

8. TPM has more info...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/04/congress_obamacare_for_thee_but_not_for_me.php

No sense in denying it. Politico won the primetime last night with a breathtaking story about Congressional hypocrisy. The article’s here. The nub of it is that Democrats and Republicans are supposedly, and secretly, trying to exempt lawmakers and their aides from Obamacare. Back in 2009, when the bill was in its infancy, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced an amendment to effectively require members and staffs to obtain their insurance on the exchanges just like your average Joe whose employer doesn’t provide health benefits. It passed, for reasons which should be politically obvious. Now members want a mulligan.

Ezra Klein burrows into the specifics and lets these supposedly scheming members of Congress off the hook. All that’s happening, he reports, is that members are trying to figure out a way for Congress to continue contributing to employee premiums.

We’re still burrowing down into the specifics ourselves, because we want to give everyone a completely fair shake, without lapsing into credulity. But at first glance, and then after some initial reporting, I think the truth is somewhere in between.

Congressional leaders don’t appear to be trying to repeal the Grassley amendment. As Ezra writes, they’re investigating whether there’s a way for the federal government, which employs Congressional aides, to continue helping folks on the Hill afford insurance.

But that in and of itself violates the spirit, if not the letter, of Grassley’s amendment.

[antigop]

9. Exra Klein weighs in

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/25/no-congress-isnt-trying-to-exempt-itself-from-obamacare/