Here’s an interesting series of articles rolled into one from Fox Business News regular, Elizabeth MacDonald:
A fight is brewing over an amendment to health reform introduced by Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that would require the president, the vice president, the cabinet, Congress, the czars and their staffers to buy health insurance in the new health-insurance exchanges set up under the new law.
Under the new law, they get to keep the insurance they already have, so long as it’s the “minimum essential coverage,” a clause which starts in 2014. The exchanges start in 2014 as well. Other federal workers would not be affected by the Grassley/Coburn amendment.
“The message to the people at the grassroots is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us,” Sen. Grassley said in a statement.
Taxpayers foot the $27 billion annual cost for government health insurance coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The issue is, why not require elected officials and their staffers to enroll in new insurance exchanges, to perhaps avoid the fate of similar exchanges that have failed in the past and since those tax dollars will be spent anyway on their coverage?
And given the poor history of insurance exchanges, will taxpayers be asked to step in once again?
Give her blog a try and subscribe. She is well sourced, informed and clearly reports all sides of an issue as she see’s it. Highly recommended for the average reader with a financial or political curiosity.
