One more time on Congress getting special treatment for Obamacare

“First, if your employer provides health insurance, Obamacare does not force you to leave your employer plan and obtain coverage through a health insurance exchange.”

Dick, this ignores the obvious. Health Reform prompts employers to either suffer significant increases in costs or make many changes in their plans to maintain current levels of spending (with allowance for inflation). We now have over a decade of employer’s responding by adjusting their plans to moderate the shift in costs. Over the past 20 years, according to data from BLS (pretty broad based stuff), employers have, on average (and averages can be deceiving), reduced spend on direct compensation (salary, wages, etc.) by 2%, and increased the slice of the rewards pie by 2% to spend on health coverage. Health Reform triggers even greater shifts of expense for many employers – so, do you expect employers to continue to redirect rewards from pay to health coverage costs? Health Reform anticipates that will be the result – that employers will continue coverage. I don’t – particularly if the Cadillac Tax shows up in 2018 in its current form. I don’t expect employers to continue existing coverage, pay a substantial portion of the costs, and an excise tax to boot. They will either reduce coverage or drop coverage – because, remember, no Cadillac Tax for public exchange coverage.

“So, if we want members of Congress to be treated like the rest of us, they should simply keep their employer coverage (The Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan) like the rest of us.”

No. If Health Reform is to remain the law of the land, we want members of Congress to have to comply with its terms – like the rest of us. You wonder why this provision is in the law – who it was designed to please. What you don’t consider is that no one cared about the impact on the vast majority of non-elderly Americans when they passed the law – and targeted employers and employees who source coverage through their employer as the source of the majority of funding for the coverage expansion to others. When I am being generous, I call it buying votes. When I am being objective, I call it something else.

So here, for members of Congress, Health Reform says go to the exchange. For the rest of us, the government recently confirmed even last week that an “applicable large employer” cannot contribute towards the cost of public exchange coverage through their health plan (or indirectly, through a Health Reimbursement Account).

Americans say apply the law based on its terms, as written, or change the law. Americans say stop creating exceptions for the priviledged classes (waivers for unions, delays for large employers, etc.)

“As you can see, rather than being treated better than the rest of us, Congress through its ineptness shot itself in the foot.” In law after law, Congress exempts itself. Here, they did not. Your statement suggests the status quo, where Congress treats itself as above the law or better than the rest of us, should be maintained. Yes, it is their own fault. Staffers and members of Congress wrote this crap. You are entitled to your opinion that they should not be penalized for the stupidity and inefficiencies etc. incorporated in PPACA while the rest of us should be penalized as provided in the law (new taxes, mandates, etc.).

“To fix this the Office of Personnel Managed ruled that the employer contribution would stay as it is.” The “unfair subsidy” is that the contribution is tax free – unlike the taxability of a similar contribution made to people who are NOT members of Congress and their staffs. No, this subsidy is NOT like that received by other Americans.
No, the employer contribution is not prohibited by the law – but, the tax treatment is!

What people hate is that everyone in Congress and the Administration will accept a decision by a department of the bureaucracy that bestows special treatment and tax preferences and somehow defeats the clear language of the statute and tax code.

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