In response to Jerry Bowerman (Your Views, Oct. 21): Members of Congress and their staff are subject to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. When the law was passed, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, attached language to the bill that mandated all members of Congress and their staffers have to buy health insurance on the newly created health insurance exchanges.
What nobody accounted for was that members of Congress and their staffers have health insurance from their employer — the federal government. No other employer has been legally required to drop its employee health care plan and have them buy coverage on the exchanges. What the administration did is rule that the congressional workers would continue to get the employer contribution to help them buy their insurance on the exchange.
Indeed. This is exactly what has been discussed on this blog several times. There is no special "exemption" for Congress when it comes to the Affordable Care Act. And while I'm pleased that the Oklahoman has run a letter properly explaining the situation, it is somewhat sad that this letter needed to be run in the first place. I posted recently that several major newspapers are taking a stand against running letters that present counterfactual claims. A real newspaper would never have run letters talking about how Congress was exempting itself from "Obamacare" because that's a complete falsehood. But the Oklahoman is no real newspaper and instead, it engages in he said/she said journalism that gives its readers the false impression that the issue is up for debate.
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