Obamacare has more holes in it than a Fredericks of Hollywood nightie but not anywhere near as fun. The closer we get to 2014 the more the law is dismantled.
Last month the president arbitrarily decided to delay the employer mandate for at least a year. Never mind the law, the one he signed, says that beginning in January 2014 employers with 50 or more employees must provide health insurance for their full time workers.
Obama didn't like that part of the law so he arbitrarily set it aside.
This is like the school yard kid that makes up his own rules when his team is losing.
Are you ready for this?
the statute means that about 11,000 Members and Congressional staff will lose the generous coverage they now have as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Instead they will get the lower-quality, low-choice "Medicaid Plus" of the exchanges. The Members—annual salary: $174,000—and their better paid aides also wouldn't qualify for ObamaCare subsidies. That means they could be exposed to thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket insurance costs.WSJ
I know that just breaks your heart that someone earning $174,000 will have to give up their lush benefits and feed at the trough with the rest of us.
Have no fear. The president has decided to save Congress by exempting them from participating in the exchanges.
Democrats in particular begged the White House for help, claiming the Reid language was merely an unintentional mistake. President Obama told Democrats in a closed-door meeting last week that he would personally moonlight as HR manager and resolve the issue.
And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, that's about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.
Apparently if the presidents move runs afoul of existing laws the government will just create new laws making what was illegal now legal.
Got that?
This latest White House night at the improv is also illegal. OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in congressional pay in return for less overall compensationWhy let something like that spoil a good patronage dividend?
The lesson for Americans is that Democrats who passed ObamaCare didn't even understand what they were doing to themselves, much less to everyone else. But you can bet Democrats will never extend to ordinary Americans the same fixes that they are now claiming for themselves. The real class divide in President Obama's America is between the political class and everyone else.That pretty much says it all.
Oink.
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