Health Care Bill Was Rushed - Another Example of a Special Provision

BY Editor, ON MARCH 25, 2010

Congressional committee and party leader staff may be exempted from health care bill

Several articles have been written this week highlighting another example of how the health care bill was rushed. Excerpts are below.

Exempted From Obamacare: Senior Staff Who Wrote the Bill
by Ben Domenech

For as long as the political fight took over the past year, the abbreviated review process on the health care legislation currently pending on President Obama’s desk is unquestionably going to result in some surprises — as happens with any piece of mashed-up legislation — both for the congressmen who voted for it and for the American people.

One such surprise is found on page 158 of the legislation, which appears to create a carveout for senior staff members in the leadership offices and on congressional committees, essentially exempting those senior Democrat staffers who wrote the bill from being forced to purchase health care plans in the same way as other Americans.

Politco

Healh bill may exempt top Hill staff
By: Erika Lovley and Patrick O'Connor
March 23, 2010

The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates – but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate.

Staffers and members on both sides of the aisle call it an “inequity” and an “outrage” – a loophole that exempts the staffers most involved in writing and passing the bill from one of its key requirements.

The bill requires “congressional staff” to buy insurance from the exchanges – with a stipend from the Office of Personnel Management But page 158 of the bill defines “congressional staff” narrowly, as “employees employed by the official office of a member of Congress, whether in the district office or in Washington.”

The Congressional Research Service believes a court could rule that the legislation "would exclude professional committee staff, joint committee staff, some shared staff, as well as potentially those staff employed by leadership offices.”

If that’s so, staffers who work for Nancy Pelosi in her capacity as representative from California would go into the exchange program, while staffers who work for her in her capacity as speaker would stay on the government’s plan. Other Capitol employees, like those who work for the clerk of the House or the House historian, would be similarly exempted.

Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who both say they tried to correct the issue last year, are firing at Senate leaders, saying that Democrats purposely exempted upper-level staffers out of the bill.

Read the rest of the story here.