Why Congress won't exempt itself from ObamaCare, after all

Politico posted a great political story Wednesday night that was all but guaranteed to stir up outrage:

Predictably, outrage came fast and furious in the wake of Politico's report. "Why should Congress get exempted from the utterly predictable consequences of the laws it passes while the rest of us pay the price for their arrogance?" says Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Senators and House members either need to suck it up and deal with ObamaCare like the rest of us, Morrissey says, or they can repeal the law. "Anything else is rank hypocrisy and cowardice."

This really is "political and moral misjudgment on an epochal scale," says Marc Ambinder at The Week. But "forget about the hypocrisy angle. That's easy outrage." The truly "atrocious" element of this story is the flimsy rationale for carving out an exception for legislators and their aides:

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Seriously, "the idea that Congressional staff members are special — so special as to warrant an exemption from a law that literally affects everyone else in the country — is delusional," Ambinder says. Most of the aides negotiating this alleged exemption make at least $100,000 a year, Ambinder says, and if Congress needs to keep talented staffers, they can pay them more — not cut their pay, as Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith notes the House has done — just like every other large organization has to do to keep talent.

Thankfully, the premature leaking of this plot will probably kill it, Ambinder continues. "I bet that's why someone tattled to the two reporters anyway: The idea is so bad that it has to be crushed before it can hatch."

Indeed, while Politico's article is a great political yarn, it isn't very good on policy — or even very accurate, says Ezra Klein at The Washington Post. "No one is discussing 'exempting' congressional staffers from ObamaCare." The truth is much less outrageous, and much less interesting. What's going on is essentially "an effort to fix a drafting error that prevents the federal government from paying into insurance exchanges on behalf of congressional staffers who got caught up in a political controversy." Here's the real story:

The amendment mandates that, unlike other federal employees, members of Congress and their staff will be switched to health care plans either "(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act)." But ObamaCare doesn't allow large employers to participate in exchanges until 2017, if at all, and "the federal government is the largest employer in the country," Klein notes. Everyone is waiting on a ruling from the Office of Personnel Management on whether Congress has the authority to pay some of their staffers' premiums.

"See? This is getting boring already," Klein says. Which is probably why Politico opted to put the politics above policy.