And the hits just keep on coming.<\/p>\n
After news broke<\/a> that the leadership in both the House and Senate were conspiring to exempt themselves<\/a> from ObamaCare\u2019s costly insurance exchanges, we\u2019re told that the problem isn\u2019t Congress shirking responsibility for a law it passed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worse.<\/p>\n The real issue, according to reporting by health policy expert Ezra Klein<\/a>, is that Congress is too stupid to write a law clear enough to know what it does.<\/p>\n Per Klein:<\/p>\n “Here\u2019s how it happened: Back during the Affordable Care Act negotiations, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed an amendment forcing all members of Congress and all of their staffs to enter the exchanges. The purpose of the amendment was to embarrass the Democrats. But in a bit of jujitsu of which they were inordinately proud, Democrats instead embraced the amendment and added it to the law. “That\u2019s where the problem comes in. This was an\u00a0offhand amendment that was supposed to be rejected.\u00a0It\u2019s not clear that the federal government has the authority to pay for congressional staffers on the exchanges, the way it pays for them now in the federal benefits program. That could lead\u00a0to a lot of staffers quitting Congress because they can\u2019t afford to shoulder 100 percent of their premiums.”<\/p>\n Got that?<\/p>\n Rather than think through how an amendment would alter the structure of a law that, as one of its architects put it recently, \u201cis probably the most complex piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress<\/a>,\u201d Democrats opted to play games. No wonder the lead author of the law sees \u201ca huge train wreck coming down<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n“So Grassley\u2019s amendment means that the largest employer in the country is required to put some of its employees \u2014 the ones working for Congress \u2014 on the exchanges. But the exchanges don\u2019t have any procedures for handling premium contributions for large employers.<\/p>\n