ObamaCare(tm) Proponents Want Exemptions
The IRS will be one of the agencies collecting data for ObamaCare. Odd, then, that the National Treasury Employees Union, whose members include most of those IRS workers, is encouraging them to write their Congressman and protest being put into those very exchanges that ObamaCare proponents consider so wonderful.
Congressman David Camp has introduced legislation to force all federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the exchanges. Camp actually thinks that ObamaCare should be repealed, but if what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, why should government employees be exempt from this big government program? After all, the whole point is to get more people to participate so that (so the theory goes) insurance costs will be lower for those who need subsidies, right? The fewer the participants, the higher the cost for everyone, right?
And unions were the biggest backers of this plan. So, you have to wonder why this union is trying to get out of this. Oh, and DC legislators and their staff; they’ll be exempt, too. Subsidizing for thee, but not for me, so the saying goes. Or ought to.
Filed under: Doug • Government • Healthcare
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ObamaCare exchanges were designed for people whose employers are too small or too stupid to have an employee health plan.
Why should Congressman Camp make the U.S. Government a stupid employer?
His amendment really runs the table on stupid. I cannot imagine any useful reason for the bill — in fact, it’s so stupid I have to ask: Did you check to see this isn’t a hoax story?
Okay, I call hoax.
1. It’s “the Washington Examiner,” which isn’t as funny as the Onion, and probably not as accurate.
2. Camp’s statements, if true, make it clear he’s making the proposal only because he thinks it’s stupid, and he hates people. (Why would people vote for him? Got me.)
3. Not even a House Republican could be that stupid AND venal at the same time.
P.S. — No, Congress isn’t exempted, either:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/aug/14/ted-cruz/sen-ted-cruz-says-obama-just-granted-all-congress-/
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/obamacare-making-stuff-up-to-complain-about/
Technically, you are correct. Congress will be in the exchanges.
However, linked from the Politifact “truth-o-meter” is a WSJ article noting that, while yes, Congress is going to be enrolling in exchanges, the federal government is going to pay most of the premium. This particular fact, in an article Politifact links to, is conveniently left out.
So essentially, a 75% exemption.
Oh, and if Camp “hates people” because he puts them in the ObamaCare exchanges, what does that make the entire Democratic party for creating something that the rich can opt out of, but the poor are forced into?
Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?
You appear to ignore the fact that these people get health insurance now through their employers. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.
Now, the GOP wanted to f*** things up, and did their best, but Obama has put it back right — the employer still buys the insurance.
Why are you complaining that things work as they should? This costs the government not one more dime, and not one dime that it shouldn’t be spending anyway. It saves the nation money in making ObamaCare work.
It’s the right, moral, and economic thing to do.
What’s your complaint?
Camp hates that anyone gets health care — and his vicious attack on IRS employees is, to me, close to treason. Assaulting the U.S. is a sin, to me. As Stephen Decatur said, “In her intercourse with nations, may she always be right; but my country, right or wrong.” I expect Congressmen to have at least that much patriotism — he’s not even under fire. Camp didn’t propose this amendment to increase the quality or quanity of health care, nor to decrease costs to the taxpayer — he proposes it solely to screw people out of health care.
Notice, also, that Camp is working to take away benefits from others that he enjoys.
Hypocrite.
Today, those employees get employer-sponsored health care. Tomorrow, they have to get it on their own, but it’s still employer-sponsored.
No, there’s not a 75% exemption for your error. Camp is wholly wrong, and a blot on the American flag besides. Don’t defend nasty people trying to take down America.
P.S. — how do you get your health insurance? Shouldn’t others have that right?
Not sure whether you’re for ObamaCare or not. You say that making the government use the same insurance it’s forcing on the poor is an evil thing to do. You condemn Republicans for doing this, but you cheerfully ignore the Democrats who created this evil thing in the first place.
The jury is still out on that. Reports on savings are, in some cases, over 3 years late, and the ones that have come in don’t look promising.
With such a crystal ball as you have, how indeed can I compete?
Federal employees get a 75% break on the ObamaCare premiums that the poor do not. That’s a two-tiered system, plain and simple; one for the rich, and one for the poor. “Right” and “moral”?
I get it via my employer. However, ObamaCare is cutting people’s hours or entire jobs. We should repeal it so that people can continue to get it that way, rather than be forced into a system that you clearly consider evil.
Doug, you seriously need a Hemingway-brand detector. Camp is feeding you not-safe-for-the-table stuff, and you’re swallowing it.
1. ObamaCare is premised on the idea that most people get their insurance through their employer. Camp’s amendment is evilly designed to take away employer-paid health care, and goose up the exchanges set up to cover people who don’t get it through their employer. It has more to do with goosing up insurance plans for independent contractors and small businesses, but as you appear to share the GOP’s anti-small business bias, that probably never occurred to you.
Are the poor “forced” to take employer-based insurance? No. Your premise is in error.
Are the insurance exchanges bad plans? No. Your conclusion is in error.
But why force workers OFF insurance in the first place? Pure, evil vendetta against Americans. Vengeance is the Lord’s, and that irritates the hell into Rep. Camp, no doubt. So he is determined to take a pound of flesh out of workers. People like you.
Are you familiar with Martin Niemöller. Camp’s vendetta starts with workers at the IRS. You’re not immune. You should speak out, not ratify Camp.
The original f***-up amendment was Sen. Chuck Grassley’s. He’s GOP, too. The exchanges work just fine, and Democrats don’t mind that they’re used, really — it’s been Boehner’s office that asked for relief, not wanting to have to pass legislation admitting they’d screwed up so badly, and not wanting to lose the employees they thought they might lose.
Heh. GOP caught in their own GOP web.
Why not just let employer-sponsored plans alone? You’d have to ask Grassley, and he won’t tell you the truth now.
Why do you guys hate small businesses so much that you work to increase their costs and paperwork?
2. No, the jury is not out on ObamaCare saving TAXPAYERS money. CBO’s numbers keep coming back in showing the same $1 trillion deficit reduction it’s always shown — though savings have crept upwards quarter by quarter.
Will hospitals save money? Probably not immediately. Their costs are down, but not in every area. Overall, health care cost inflation has gone from 20% per year in 2008 and 2009, to 4% in 2012. Those saving should start showing up in insurance costs soon. You keep forgetting — or maliciously trying to cover up — that pre-ObamaCare, we in the U.S. paid twice the next highest per-capita health care costs among industrialized nations; all others have national health plans that have effectively reduced costs and provided better care. Worse, while we paid twice as much per person, we completely denied care to 50 million Americans — we paid to take care of their health, but didn’t.
It is important to rememmber that the anti-ObamaCare forces defend waste and abuse of monumental scale, waste and abuse that also harmed millions of Americans and condemned several tens of thousands of families to bankruptcy each year. ”
Waste, abuse, oppression, and horrible health care — the four saving graces of GOP policies?
Don’t complain about high costs while your defending such a system. Your defense is immoral and corrupt.
I’ll take modest cost increases. We’re still saving much more over non-ObamaCare, and that will continue, thank God.
3. Show me one time Camp has ever voted for an increase in health care, in any way. My crystal ball is 100% accurate in this case. You need a Hemingway, bad.
4. Federal employees forced into health care exchanges get no break in the costs — they simply continue to get their employer-paid share.
Why do you want to take that away from federal employees? Are you with al Quaeda in the Great Lakes, or al Quaeda in Southern California? Is there any rational explanation for your hatred of federal employees? Do you think Niemöller was wrong? I’m beginning to wonder if you have any inkling just how ObamaCare works. You don’t seem to know much about health insurance in any incarnation.
Two-tiered system? Yeah, it would be good if all employers provided health care insurance. Probably better if it were a national single-payer like Germany or France or Canada or Japan, the nations we compete against in international trade. But the GOP are blinded to places where good government functions better than private enterprise, and taking cues from Stalin, they put barriers up to stop that competition, to preserve profits at the expense of Americans from going to fat cats.
I can’t imagine why you defend such an anti-competition, anti-American system.
5. ObamaCare isn’t cutting hours. ERISA requires any company with more than 50 employees to provide health care insurance – so does ObamaCare. The corporate implementation has been delayed a year. So why are companies claiming to be cutting hours, or actually doing it? I don’t know why they claim ObamaCare causes it — maybe they’re such poor businessmen that they think they’re avoiding something. Stupidity appears to run rampant among GOP, and people who vote for them, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find it — but are they really that dumb? Or are they making bogus claims for political reasons? Subway famously opposed every part of ObamaCare (a good reason to avoid Subway, if you ask me — hepatitis shots are expensive, and if their health care workers aren’t getting regular preventive care and health checks, you should worry).
Why didn’t ERISA bite them the same way? It probably did, but they managed to skate around the law. ERISA has been the law for over 40 years — and just now the businesses discover the employee protection clauses . . .
You REALLY need a Hemingway. That’s bull excrement anyone should see, even without a detector.
6. You get insurance through your employer, but you think federal employees are beneath you, and don’t deserve the same stuff. No wonder you’ve been hornswoggled by Rep. Camp’s deviltry.
Sometimes I think we should have an amendment that says this is a Christian nation — with teeth, so people wouldn’t make such unChristian stands, with unChristian claims, to push unChristian policies to damage America.
Why shouldn’t Americans get stuff at least as good as any Frenchman? Why should you pay 30% more for health insurance, so your insurance company can bar poor people from getting care at your hospital?
But you’re right: That provision that kicks any federal employee off of health care is unconscionable. Camps amendment doubles down on evil. (Almost too bad Jesus doesn’t run the lightning strikes, no?) Write Camp and tell him that. Then write Grassley and Boehner.
I won’t forget that when the crunch came and the GOP appealed to Obama to help them out, Obama did the right thing, but Rep. Camp played ugly politics.
You’re on my suspect list, now, too. How could you step into that cow patty, and then deny it?
Your headline is technically wrong, you know. Yes, the Democrats think it’s stupid to kick Congressional employees out of employer-sponsored health care plans in hopes of making a political point.
But it was a GOP amendment. And it is the House GOP especially who begged Obama to act. Democrats are quite satisfied that the exchanges work well and will provide affordable health care insurance — the difficulty comes in having to tax the employer-paid part, if paid to employees, or stop the payments. Grassley admitted behind closed doors that he was not trying to cut the pay of Congressional staff, I hear.
But your headline blames it on proponents, who have not complained. It’s the ObamaCare opponents who beg for relief — and not relief from ObamaCare, but relief from the secondary consequences of their pique.
The poor are forced into exchanges. I never said the above.
I didn’t conclude that. I specifically said that you have couched being put into them in the vilest terms that either you think that, or you’re trying to have it both ways.
Please get your facts straight, at least with respect to what I have plainly said.
You claim that Grassley “forced” federal employees off their current insurance in favor of the exchanges. This sounds like a bad thing. Then you claim that Democrats don’t mind that they’re used. If they don’t mind, then they shouldn’t mind that federal employees use them. The exchanges are supposed to cut costs for the insured, especially the poor. This is good, no? Both ways.
Ironic coming from someone supporting a plan that does exactly that.
You mean these CBO numbers?
Please get your fact straight.
This assumes government must run health insurance. I do not assume that.
Which, by definition, is a break in the cost that others on the exchange won’t have. Or at least those who aren’t employed or under-employed. I don’t begrudge anyone a Cadillac health plan. But if the government is going to force citizens into a plan or pay a fine, then, since it’s the government requiring it, the government ought to deal with it, too. If it’s a burden for them, why force it on the entire country?
Clearly you didn’t click on my supporting link showing this is true.
Please get your facts straight.
You call me un-Christian, while making wild accusations like this. Really?
Clearly you’ve fallen for the myth that socialized medicine costs less for the same outcome. You’d be mistaken.
I’d suggest this for some good reading. It’s long, so skip down to Myth #4, the last one. It debunks some (but not even all) the problems when making this claim.
Look, Ed. I appreciate the debate, but if you won’t even get my points straight, let alone those from the CBO or the experiences of small businesses, then this isn’t going anywhere. You throw your shadows on the wall, I throw mine, but until we turn around and find out what’s casting those shadows — what is reality — we aren’t going to get anywhere. The sad thing is, reality is readily available.
We may not agree on the remedy, but the problems with ObamaCare are legion, and not at all trivial. And the “savings” keep getting smaller, just like they have done for every other experiment in socialized medicine, until they become costs. Canada has been considering moving back to a more market-based solution to deal with the escalating costs and the temptation to politicize health care. I don’t want to go down this road, only to bankrupt our kids and then have to come back after we learn our lesson.
So, offering health care insurance to poor people is “forcing them into exchanges,” but denying them care so their babies die is okay?
Have you given a moment’s thought to the moral implications of that position?
No, denying them care so their babies die is not OK. And they aren’t.
Please get your facts straight.
And repealing ObamaCare, contrary to your assumptions, does not mean that Republicans want to do nothing at all. They’ve had a plan for years.
You may want to review these CBO numbers: http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/more-good-news-about-the-affordable-care-act-obamacare-cbo-says-it-will-save-money/
Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers still show hours not being cut for ObamaCare — which would have really been odd since the law doesn’t apply to those employers for another year. Typical Republican fear mongering, stampeding people to do stupid things that are not necessary, were your claim correct. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/obamacare-worker-hours_n_3882403.html
In an average year, 5 million insurance plans for individuals get cancelled. In the first year of ObamaCare, that number dropped to 4.5 million. GOP called “scandalous.”
But then it turns out that 4 million of those plans were replaced with equal or less expensive plans through ObamaCare exchanges, and by December only 10,000 of the “cancelleds” seemed to be without a plan.
Is there no end to the stuff ObamaCare critics will make up, to complain about improving health care?
What do you think Jesus would have done? He was in the health care business, after all, and the GOP of His day criticized him for healing on the Sabbath . . .
The BLS may wish to talk to these retailers:
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/03/obamacares-biggest-impacts-americans-losing-hours-losing-coverage/
Unless all those companies are “fear mongering”, you may want to consider your sources.
And if you assume that everyone who’s policy didn’t live up to the ObamaCare standard would’ve lost their coverage anyway, then your numbers might be reasonable. More likely, most are in addition to those who get dropped during the course of a year.
No need to make things up. It’s happening.
And instead of quoting CBO estimates from 2 years ago, here are some from today:
More at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/4/cbo-obamacare-push-2m-workers-out-labor-market/
People (and businesses) respond to incentives. The “incentives” in ObamaCare are going to kill the economy.