I don' t think I need to add a word to this Politico story about the Obamacare exemptions for Congress:
With the federal government nearing shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner stood on the House floor Monday and called on his colleagues to vote for a bill banning a “so-called exemption” that lawmakers and staffers receive for their health insurance.
“Why don’t we make sure that every American is treated just like we are?” Boehner asked, seeking to prohibit members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides from getting thousands of dollars in subsidies for their health insurance as they join Obamacare-mandated insurance exchanges.
Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to POLITICO. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was also aware of these discussions, the documents show.
During a five-month period stretching from February to July, Boehner and his aides sought along with Reid’s office to solve what had become a big headache for both of them. They drafted and reviewed a possible legislative fix, as well as continued to push for an administrative one from the Office of Personnel Management.
Boehner aides insist there was never any intention to move legislation through the House to correct the problem. McConnell was also opposed to any legislation approach to the controversy, said spokesman Don Stewart.
Boehner and Reid, however, went so far as to ask to meet with President Barack Obama to lobby him personally for help — using a cover story in order to protect the secrecy of the discussions, according to these documents.
Although the Oval Office session with Obama never came off, a senior Boehner aide spoke directly to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the speaker’s desire to retain the employer contribution for lawmakers and staff.
The issue of whether lawmakers and staff will continue to receive the employer contribution from the federal government — estimated at between $5,000 to $12,000 annually — has become political kryptonite on Capitol Hill. As part of the Affordable Care Act, lawmakers and aides are required to join insurance exchanges that begin operating on Tuesday, the same day the government shut down.
OPM initially ruled that lawmakers and staffers couldn’t receive the subsidies once they went into the exchanges. This caused an uproar in Congress, since lawmakers and aides were going to be treated differently than millions of Americans who receive these same subsidies from their employers. Lawmakers and aides argued they weren’t seeking special treatment, but a level playing field with everyone else.
Under heavy pressure from Hill Democrats, Obama and top White House aides got personally involved in the dispute. OPM then reversed course and issued a regulation saying the subsidies would go on.
Boehner, however, injected the issue into the government-shutdown debate by attaching a measure to end the subsidies to a House GOP funding bill, which Senate Democrats adamantly oppose.
Boehner’s aides vehemently deny that the speaker’s private efforts contradict his public statements on the issue. They insist Democrats were the ones who enacted Obamacare and it is up to them to address the problem. ....
In mid-July, as Boehner and Reid were trying to schedule a private meeting with Obama on the super-sensitive topic, the speaker’s top aide said it was okay to use a cover story to conceal the true nature of that prospective White House gathering.
“We can’t let it get out there that this is for [Boehner] and [Reid] to ask the President to carve us out of the requirement of Obamacare,” Sommers told David Krone, Reid’s top aide in a July 17 e-mail obtained by POLITICO.....
After Krone suggested that the White House press office might float that the Boehner-Reid-Obama meeting was on immigration, Sommers said he wasn’t concerned about what cover story was just as long as the real reason behind the meeting wasn’t disclosed.
“I really don’t care what is is about[,] it just can’t be about what we know it is about!” Sommers told Krone.
That meeting with Obama never took place.
Boehner and Reid’s offices also circulated some draft legislation to fix the problem, although none was ever introduced. They considered — briefly and “not seriously,” according to the speaker’s office — making all House staffers part of the “Committee of the Whole” in order to get around the insurance-exchange requirement. Committee staffers were not required to enroll in exchanges.
Boehner and Reid’s staffers also discussed “grandfathering” all members of Congress into the Federal Employee Benefit Health Plan, their current insurance program, so they didn’t have to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges. That idea was eventually dropped as well.
Boehner’s office said the leak of private e-mails to POLITICO shows how concerned Democrats are about the matter.... Rest of article
Update: Business Insider published several emails
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Told you!!!
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32 comments:
appreciate the info you are trying to relay. FYI, the only folks who actually go to Politico's website work for Pelosi and Reid. They have a **tendency** to LEAN left. News hit early this morning that certain Dems were threatening Boehner---give us Obamacare or we'll release the emails between Reid's staff member and your staff member. Boehner said no, they sent the emails to Politico.
I'm no Boehner fan, not by any means, but I don't get news from that website.
I do agree that congress should be made to abide by same laws as all Americans. Do the 'leaked emails' make me blame all this crap on anyone new? No, I still blame Harry Reid first, Obama, Dems, and any weak Demopublicans.
What I DO find interesting is that Reid has crossed even HIS threshold of political bullying. O and Reid didn't think the repubs would stand their ground on Obamacare.
Representatives/Senators, stand fast and do not give in. STAND UP FOR THE FOLKS WHO PUT YOU IN OFFICE.
and just a little side note, Repubs formally offered to fund the parks and Veterans Administration. Democrats and the White House have officially turned this offer down. Hmmm. What do Reid and Obama have against vets?
FINALLY! Repubs are doing something RIGHT. KEEP IT UP
Amen to 3:36
@3:36
You can use the same tactics as the House GOP! Next time your mortgage payment is due, just tell them that you no longer agree to the mortgage contract you signed. That you refuse to pay until they change your payment.
Also, at restaurants you can have dinner, and then when the bill comes argue that you'll only pay 90% of what you ordered because in retrospect, you didn't like it.
Good Luck!
AMEN to 4:11.. why are we arguing over something that is law?!
Obama worked on the bill over a year. Cost millions in time, money and personnel to get the bill passed. Why is he flying around the country to get people to buy into it since it, since it is already law??
... why are we arguing over something that is law?!
You are too intellectually dishonest -- or likely not intellectual at all -- to admit the myriad of existing immigration laws that are going wholesale unenforced by executive malfeasance.
4:45 PM only a law born of extreme chicanery in the Senate.
Please, grow a set.
4:45 Gee, the Dred Scott decision was a Supreme Court decision that validated a law, just like the Roberts court decision re: Obamacare.
How did that Dred Scott decision get overturned again? The abolitionists surrendered their principles, didn't they?
@8:44
Dredd Scott was overturned through the normal legislative process and the passing of the 14, 15, and 16th amendments. The GOP has no chance of actually getting a law or amendment passed that would change ACA, so instead they're holding the country hostage on an unrelated budget issue.
And let's be clear, it is unrelated. The budget is not the venue for creating law.
11:42 Quite right - that 14th Amendment passed around 1868, right?
So, anyone here got any recollection about what happened after the Dred Scott decision, oh from around 1860 to April 15, 1865, well before the 14th Amendment got passed?
It seems Mississippi was involved somehow. It seems to have slipped the memory of our correspondent at 11:42.
3:36, they have the actual emails, and you're LA LA LA I IGNORE LIBRUL FACTS.
Despise Reid and Pelosi if you want, but if you pretend Boehner is any different, you're a sucker.
I can't believe that conservatives are opposed to the creation of an insurance pool . That's all this bill started out to be.
Small companies and individuals had to pay prohibitive premium rates to get health insurance because they weren't part of a large pool like those in say, GE.
This was originally Bob Dole's plan.
Rather than make this work, the GOP adopted a strategy of non-cooperation and non-negotiation, thinking this would help them win the next election.
Now we are experiencing the negative effects of a bad strategy that got worse as the extremists in the party took it to , well, the extreme, and the GOP is stuck with it and them.
So, the GOP extremists have worked to throw out the baby with the bathwater yet again.
No one is against the creation of an insurance pool. Many of us participate in one right now. However, our participation is voluntary, not forced upon us by the federal government. I don't care if it was Bob Dole or Mitt Romney or Calvin Coolidge who originally had the idea - whoever it was came up with a system whereby people who don't want the product have to purchase it anyway so they'll have enough money to pay for the people who use it. Frankly, if they can't talk my 29 and 32 year old daughters into purchasing their insurance on the exchange then they shouldn't fine them when they choose not to.
Reading liberal comments is always so amusing. Thanks for giving me a giggle this morning.
American's don't want Obamacare.
Stand firm.
@12:14
Yes, because the South was so angry at the Dred Scott decision legalizing slavery that they seceded to legalize slavery?
The Dred Scott decision is often cited as an aggravating factor, but it was in the South's favor.
9:11 you're missing the point, and I suspect that's intentional.
I was commenting on a previous post talking about the sacrosanct nature of laws that have been passed and upheld by the Supreme Court. A previous poster seemd to think that gave tham an aura of infallibility. The Civil War was evidence of what happens when people disagree with the laws ans SCOTUS decisions.
They keep talking about savings of premiums against projections not against current cost, that's a problem. Next no one and I mean no one is talking about the big cost out of pocket/deductibles, why?
@9:11
The problem is that it's a bad example. No one seceded because of the Dred Scott decision.
And of course laws aren't infallible, but a better example would have been prohibition. Clearly the will of the people was to repeal prohibition, and it was done in the normal course of the legislative process.
The POINT is that the budget is a bargaining tool when the issue is money. If the GOP wanted to increase military spending, then not passing a budget would be a logical response to that. Unfortunately, they are trying to use the budget to force a change in a law that is no longer on the floor for discussion.
The PPACA is a huge part of the liberals' end game, which is single payer health care for all. Put simply, it has to be fully implemented so it will fail and the people will be willing to accept single payer. Remember, the goal is wealth redistribution that will enable them to stay in power forever. This movement, started in the 60's with the establishment of compulsory old age health insurance for all working people, has been going on through two or three generations and will continue until they either get what they want or we depose them and fix the system ourselves.
The dirty secret 10:12 is not to share the cost details with the Obama cultists before they are firmly hooked in the gill.
The media spins the Bronze plan to make Obamacare appear look cheap and doable. But Forbes reported that the *average* deductible for Bronze will be $5150 annually. Then after meeting the deductible Bronze only pays 60% and you are stuck with the other 40%.
It isn't going to take long for young, healthy people to figure out that paying the penalty makes the most economic sense.
We're watching the disaster unfold in real time.
"The PPACA is a huge part of the liberals' end game, which is single payer health care for all"
Horrors. As opposed to single payer for 65 and older. What evil will they concoct next? Free milk for poor children?
Re: 8:06
One of the funniest rants I ever heard was from some outraged middle-aged man complaining about the numerous problems his elderly mother had getting medical care through Medicare, and the massive difficulties he had trying to shepherd her through the bureaucratic maze.
The punchline? Then he told me ho couldn't wait for single-payer, government provided health care for everyone, then we wouldn't have these problems. :-)
Have any of these boosters of government-provided health care ever been a patient at a VA? Had a family member try to get care there? Those of us who have tried to provide quality care through a VA know the system itself is the problem that prevents this from happening. Magnify it 20-fold and anyone with common sense can predict the outcome.
The President will never negotiate with a small group of Tea Party Repubs. who are willing to blow up our economy unless they get their way in dismantling one of his signature achievements in office, getting the Affordable Care Act passed. Many Repub. leaders have publicly criticized these extremists over this gross misconduct on their part: Gov. Christie, Sen. McCain, Sen. Corker, among many others.
The American people rejected the Repubs.'. candidate, Gov.Romney, in Nov. 2012, so now these Tea House members want to hold us hostage so they can try to get what they will never get at the ballot box, a President who would dismantle this law of the land. It's despicable and will hasten the Tea Party's already waning influence and their loss of people who identify themselves with these extremists(less than 18% of Americans).
"One of the funniest rants I ever heard was from some outraged middle-aged man complaining about the numerous problems his elderly mother had getting medical care through Medicare, and the massive difficulties he had trying to shepherd her through the bureaucratic maze."
Funny, my dad just showed his Medicare card, and that was that. Maybe your friend isn't that smart ... or he's one of the many confusing Medicare with Medicaid.
7:14 He's an engineer (aerospace). Pretty smart. His mom is 70 - that's Medicare, not Medicaid.
I've been dealing with Medicare for over 20 years from the other side - figuring out what is covered is a mess. The people who answer their phones give out as many wrong answers as the people who ask the question lines at the IRS.
Finally, youu are deliberating avoiding my point about people not realizing Medicare IS single-payer, i.e., government-provided, health care, the alleged salvation for our healthcare problems. Read about the problems at the Jackson VA, and the pathetic response to the problems frrom the administrators, to see what it's like when you get locked into getting your care directly from a government agency, with no alternative. Try to focus on that point, and not make up imaginary straw men by attacking the imaginary failings of bright people like my friend.
Remember reports of Obamacare asking about gun ownership? Well, its hit.
“Do you own any firearms?”
Man answered ‘yes’
He was told he needed to go to the Imperial County Sheriff’s office (California) and turn in his firearms and then he would get his ‘healthcare’.
To the Repubs in the House: Do not give in. And don’t think the I-didn’t-give-in line will help you. Work on any who may be wavering and stand together. Stand up for us or we will not vote for you. Period.
Obama going all control freaky and unhinged now. Democrats should be very worried.
"His mom is 70 - that's Medicare, not Medicaid."
Not necessarily. Most conspicuously, Medicare doesn't pay for custodial nursing-home care (i.e., 95% of nursing home care). Medicaid has to pick that up, and there's lots of bureaucracy there - largely because the states are running it.
Do we face a bigger cost issue than the Baby Boom going into the nursing home? I can't think of one offhand. Nursing homes are like $6K a *month*. You would just about do better hiring someone to live with the patient.
As for Medicare = single payer, yep. Thing is, Medicare works pretty darn well - less overhead than private insurance, and just look what the 65+ crowd does when you talk about taking it away from 'em.
The truth of the Obamacare disaster.
The serial liar in the flesh.
Bend over interns.
bill, the agenda you describe is very conspiratorial. You've forgotten,apparently, that the Affordable Care Act is Dole's and Gingrich's solution to out of control health care costs.
You may not understand that in a global economy, the lack of a well functioning, reasonably priced health care system attracts skilled labor.
Rafael Theodore Cruz, born in Canada to a father who fought with Fidel and then fell out with Fidel ,like Norquist, wants to dismantle our government. They do not want to improve our government and make it work better. They do not like a democracy.
Yes, it sounds conspiratorial because that's what I think it is - a back room political conspiracy that has been handed down from old liberals to young liberals since it was envisioned, and it will continue to be the holy grail of the left until they've implemented it. I don't much care whose idea it was, compulsory purchasing of health insurance is wrong, and if that's the only way they can make this work then it's not a good law.
8:25, the more you hate Cruz, the happier we are. He and Lee have done fantastic, exactly what people have been asking for. The better they do, the pissier you get.
Boehner is finally doing something outstanding. Repubs better keep it up.
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