Congress to Exempt Lawmakers and Their Aides from Obamacare

Congress’s Obamacare quandry

April 25, 2013

MarketWatch - MarketWatch’s Steve Goldstein makes note of Politico’s potentially explosive story in our site’s Political Watch blog. Politico says lawmakers and Congressional aides on both sides of the aisle may end up being exempted from President Obama’s health-care overhaul.

The story notes that members of Congress and their staffs have to participate in health exchanges, thanks to a little-noticed provision enacted when the bill, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, was passed in 2010. The provision was meant to embarrass Democrats who advocated the initiative commonly called Obamacare, but Democrats embraced the idea of having to take part in the exchanges.

Trouble is, big employers — like the U.S. government — aren’t allowed to participate in the exchanges until 2017 and so the concern is that it will leave Congressional staffers on their own for three years during which they’ll have to buy insurance themselves.

Ezra Klein in the Washington Post says the discussions in Congress going on now aren’t as controversial as Politico makes them out to be. He notes that the issue of whether Congressional staffers face a coverage gap has yet to be ruled upon by the Office of Personnel Management. He quotes officials in Congress who say the real talks are about making sure the federal government continues providing its share of premiums once Obamacare kicks in next year.

If you’re wondering whether the issue is affecting insurer stocks, it’s not. The major companies’ shares are seeing marginal gains and losses in trading on Thursday.