Obamacare, Congress, And The Coming “Train Wreck”

The history of Obamacare so far has been a very rocky road with very little hope of stabilizing.  The crafting of the legislation, the passage of the bill, and the Supreme Court challenge, and now the costly rollout and implementation have been marked by hurdle after hurdle and sometimes from very unlikely sources.

The latest news out of the nation’s capital regarding Obamacare is word that members of Congress are allegedly seeking bipartisan deal that would allow themselves and their staff to be “exempted” from that law.  According to Politico, “Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.”  While many would doubt this on its face, the fact is that there have been many instances of “waivers” being granted to particular industries when it came to who would have to follow the rules as outlined in the 1,000-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Politico article implied that nobody was willing to take credit for the idea that Democrats and Republicans were crafting legislation to exempt thousands of employees on Capitol Hill from coming under the full force of Obamacare.  The article also noted that, “There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a ‘brain drain’ on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.”

This story set off a firestorm of controversy this past weekend with many lawmakers left holding the bag on what exactly was going on and how Democrats who actually voted for the bill could possibly be thinking that it would be smart politics to exempt those on Capitol Hill from the law, while trying to make arguments supporting it at the early stages of implementation.

The Politico piece now appears to have been wrong on this and it isn’t only those supporters of the bill like Ezra Klein who are making the clarifications, but opponents like FreedomWorks and The Wall Street Journal, who published articles earlier this week laying out the entire story of what was happening. FreedomWorks laid out the facts, “The talks are about what the law actually means, and whether the government, as an employer, can help fund medical coverage for members of Congress and their staffs who are on exchange-based insurance.” The Wall Street Journal offered points of fact also writing that, “Mr. Reid’s office says he merely wants to ensure that the generous subsidies in the current federal-employee health plan can continue to flow to Congressional staff once they are required to obtain coverage via Obamacare’s new insurance exchanges. Since insurance companies are referring to the Obamacare policies that will be offered on exchanges as ‘Medicaid plus,’ you can see why Congress wants to protect its own.”

The truth of the matter is regardless of the Politico story, what is happening right now is an absolute validation of the problem that many people had with Obamacare in the first place: the law was written so fast and with so many regulatory guidelines that had yet to be laid out that nobody could know what was actually in the bill and how any of it would actually be made to work in the real world. Retiring Montana Democrat Senator Max Baucus, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee and co-authored Obamacare, said last week (shortly before announcing he would not seek reelection) that the implementation of Obamacare is going to be a “train wreck.”

Nobody else could have put it any better. What we are continuing to see with each passing day is that as this legislation slowly becomes a reality for taxpayers, small business owners, and industries all across the country, the cost of complying will be too much for citizens to handle.