(D) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE—
(i) REQUIREMENT—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are—
(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).
(ii) DEFINITIONS—In this section:
(I) MEMBER OF CONGRESS—The term ‘‘Member of Congress’’ means any member of the House of Representatives or the Senate.
(II) CONGRESSIONAL STAFF—The term ‘‘congressional staff’’ means all full-time and part-time employees employed by the official office of a Member of Congress, whether in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC.
Music to Lemkin’s ears. By forcing Congress and their staffs onto the exchange, you can be quite sure that there will be a broad array of choices there and that the price will be, er, right. I’ve long said that most of the problem with getting healthcare reform done is that members of Congress simply have no clue what it’s like on the outside: they and their families have nearly-free, 24/7 access to what’s essentially a private physician, fantastically complete coverage with a wide menu of choices for care, and low to no co-pays when something really hits the fan. Plus they cant’ be dropped. Why wouldn’t they persist in calling such a setup “the best healthcare in the world”? It pretty much is. The trouble is that almost nobody outside Congress has access to even a part of a plan like that.
What reform is about is allowing the rest of us access to some of that. And doing it in a way that, even projecting out 20 years, will only be costing the taxpayer 1% relative to doing nothing. Thirty million people will have access to care on the basis of that 1%. And, of course, those same projections show a half trillion dollar savings to the overall budget. Frankly, that’s amazing given the compromised nature and inherently “around-the-edges” approach of this plan so frequently (and nonsensically) derided as “government takeover.” Any plan with a total monetary outlay on the part of the government amounting to ~90 billion dollars a year isn’t a takeover of anything. The Pentagon budgeted
“$52.1 billion [for ancillary items] such as ammunition, portable generators, cooling equipment, field medical supplies, hospital equipment, and night vision goggles”
in 2009. Nothing inherently wrong with any of those things, but that’s a military outlay of $50B a year and doesn’t even get around to, oh, I don’t know, guns.
We’re wasting well north of $40B a year on the plainly idiotic War on Drugs. Don’t even get me started on how many times over our little foray into Iraq could pay for healthcare in this country. But such context never matters to the savvy reporter. Who won today’s political horse race? Who played their press releases better?
Never: who lied? Whose facts were more accurate? What is the broader context of this decision?
Even more importantly, though: people won’t be making career decisions based solely on maintaining their and their families’ access to healthcare. Even if it fails in every other way, signing these reforms into law will let a million startups bloom.
Lemkin 