Congress is reportedly trying to exempt itself from Obamacare. "Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks" to figure out how to do this, Politico reports.
Congress is looking at ways to escape the coils of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by making itself and its employees exempt from the provisions of the act. This show of confidence in its own handiwork – the major legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration – is pretty much what the public has come to expect of the political class. As John Brensnahan & Jake Sherman write in Politico:
Support for Obamacare has always been less than overwhelming. But there were constituencies that were thought to be reliable. Now, that seems to be changing, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
Last month, I reported that Obamacare had stirred up serious buyers remorse among unions who were discovering the law was driving up insurance costs, wreaking havoc with contractual negotiations, and making union jobs less competitive. While Big Labor is lobbying for special Obamacare subsidies and exemptions, one union has given up on trying to make the law work for them and is now publicly calling for a full Obamacare repeal.
When President Obama released his first budget — entitled with no hint of irony, “A New Era of Responsibility” — he projected that deficit spending over the next five fiscal years (2010-14) would total $3.767 trillion. Now, Obama has released his fifth budget (which doesn’t seem to have a name).
The Obama administration is very much about bold visions and big promises, and it takes pride in "fundamentally transforming" this and that, doing things in "a new way," and so forth. However, this turns out to be the easy part. Take Obamacare. The thing is a patchwork of waivers and carve outs. And the administration appears incapable of ... well, of administering it with any consistency or competency.
Paul Bedard writes of the latest reason for apprehension about the coming of Obamacare:
The 61-page online Obamacare draft application for health care includes asking if the applicant wants to register to vote, raising the specter that pro-Obama groups being tapped to help Americans sign up for the program will also steer them to register with the Democratic Party.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted that Obamacare might cause "some men and younger customers [to] see their rates increase," in regard to health care insurance costs.
In 2010, the Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress in open defiance of public opinion, and an incensed citizenry responded by giving Republicans their biggest gains in the House of Representatives since before World War II. Now, coinciding with tomorrow’s 3-year anniversary of President Obama’s signing Obamacare into law, new polling suggests that his namesake is now even less popular than it was at the time of its passage.
Thanks to former Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak and his group of seven pro-life Democrats, women across their districts face higher insurance premiums today.
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