Federal Workers Don’t Want Obamacare
Wall St Cheat Sheet - “If the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court, along with all their staffs, are required to go under Affordable Healthcare Act, I would not object,” read one response to a survey conducted by
FedSmith.com, a portal for information regarding issues — like the
Affordable Care Act — that impact federal workers. “But if it’s not good
enough for the heads of the 3 branches of Government,
it isn’t good enough for the rest of us.”
In responses in total, a
great majority of them expressing the same idea: Federal employees are
not pleased at having the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program replaced by Obamacare.
The underlying complaint running through a majority of these opinions
was that members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff, and Obama
administration appointees will not be affected by potential Obamacare
flaws — like premium hikes — as much as the average American.
“When they ‘live it,’ they will know how to improve it,” another respondent wrote.
The survey of 2,500 federal employees and retirees found that 92.3 percent of them believe workers and retirees should keep keep their
current health insurance and not be forced to purchase coverage through
the exchanges. Only 2.9 percent thought the opposite. The preference
for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program was even more obvious
when survey respondents were asked whether they think federal employees
should carry their health insurance into retirement, as is the current policy, or enroll in Medicare; 96.1 percent said the current system should not be changed.
When Congress first passed the health care reform, known
colloquially as Obamacare, three years ago, attached was an amendment
requiring all lawmakers and their staffs to purchase health care
insurance via the online exchanges. This meant lawmakers would lose the
generous coverage they were granted under the Federal Employees Health
Benefits Program – where the government [taxpayers] subsidized as much as 75 percent
of the premiums.
It was written into the bill in the first place on the
theory that if Congress was going to make Americans live under the
provisions of Obamacare, those who authored it should, as well. But
because the language of the amendment contained no guidance on whether
the federal contributions toward their health plans was allowed,
Congress began to worry.
.
In April, Michigan Republican Dave Camp, chairman of the
House Ways and Means Committee, introduced legislation that would shift
all federal employees from FEHBP to the exchanges.
“If the ObamaCare
exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small
businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for
the president, vice president, Congress, and federal employees,” said
Camp’s spokeswoman
in a statement.
And now that the Office of Personnel Management has made
its decision regarding benefits for Congress, all other federal workers
are becoming more worried.
The National Treasury Employees Union — which includes
employees of the Internal Revenue Service — asked its members in late
July to write to their representatives regarding their
concern about Camp’s legislative efforts.
“I am a federal employee and one of your constituents,” began one
letter. “I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced
by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal
Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and into the insurance
exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.”
The argument is that pushing federal employees out of
the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program would be unfair.
“It would
be unjust to change the rules after I have spent the majority of my
working life in a public service career that is not as lucrative as the
private sector when the career decision to forgo private sector lucre
now was in large part made in response to the promise that benefits
would be much better for public service employees when they retire,”
wrote another respondent.
“I relied upon and take action in response to
the promises that were made, so not living up to the promises amount to a
fraud that changed my entire career path.”
Related:
- Federal Employees' Database of Salaries
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