Friday, April 26, 2013

Poetic Justice


Ah, you have to love this.  So the only health plans the Federal Government can make available to members of Congress and its staff are plans offered through an Exchange.

But for Members, their income will place them outside the range where subsidies are available.  Even for lower paid staff, the subsidy is unlikely to be as generous as the subsidy currently implicit in their health care coverage.

Even more ironic are the attempts to say that this is a "drafting error"  -- as Ezra Klein says:
This isn’t, in other words, an effort to flee Obamacare. It’s an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy.
Well, there are a lot of businesses and individuals in the individual insurance market who when they see the cost of their coverage under Obamacare are going to hope that they are only suffering from a drafting error too.

My guess is that the Office of Personnel Management will make a ruling that lets the members and their staffs avoid any pain.  How nice.