Says “President Obama just granted all of Congress an exception” to Obamacare.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during a speech Aug. 10 to the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz wants Congress to refuse to fund Obamacare. The law’s such a mess, the Texas Republican says, that the president let lawmakers themselves off the hook.
“Look, the wheels are coming off this,” he said Aug. 10 at the conservative Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa. “… President Obama just granted all of Congress an exception. And he did it because Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats who passed this thing came begging and said, ‘Please, please, please let us out of Obamacare.’ This thing ain’t working.”
The audience let out a long “Boooo” at the mention of President Barack Obama’s action on behalf of Congress.
But did he just grant lawmakers an exception to Obamacare?
‘Congress should get the same coverage’
For many years, Congress chose from a variety of insurance plans offered by the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, which serves more than 8 million federal and retired workers and their dependents.
That stops in January, when lawmakers and some staff will be required instead to pick from plans on the health care law’s new exchanges — now known as marketplaces.
That’s because Congress faces a specific Obamacare provision forcing lawmakers from their current plans into new marketplaces — something that doesn’t apply to other Americans.
(Most people with health care through large employers won’t see significant changes under the law. They’re not required to use the marketplaces, which were designed to offer more options for small businesses and the uninsured.)
Back in 2009, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said “members of Congress should get the same coverage that we are coming up with for everyone else.” He offered an amendment that required lawmakers to get their health care through the marketplaces created by the bill. The Senate Finance Committee accepted it without objection.
Members of Congress and their staffs would have to use the hefty employer contribution they used for federal plans to buy marketplace plans, instead, his amendment said.
“My interest in having members of Congress participate in the exchange is consistent with my long-held view that Congress should live under the same laws it passes for the rest of the country,” Grassley said.
A version of the amendment made it into the law passed by Democrats, but it lacked the clarity of Grassley’s language, raising a question: Would the government’s contribution to lawmakers’ health insurance premiums follow them?
Mass confusion ensued — along with fear that the law’s ambiguity meant lawmakers and their staffers would lose an employer contribution worth thousands toward their health care plans. They urged the administration to clarify.
On Aug. 7, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management cleared things up, proposing a rule that lawmakers’ purchases of health coverage from the exchanges would indeed be eligible for an employer contribution.
When Obamacare’s health care marketplaces launch in January, members of Congress will use them.
‘An exception’
Did the administration’s decision constitute an “exception” to Obamacare?
Here’s what the law said:
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law … 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).”
All it did was require lawmakers to use new marketplaces.
Beyond that, the wording of the law left lots of questions. Or, as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service described it, several “legal and practical issues.” To implement it, administrators had to make choices about what it meant.
As a New York Times report noted last year, “In writing the legislation, members of Congress apparently assumed that the federal contribution to their premiums would continue, but the law is silent on the question.”
Grassley, himself, insisted last year that the provision made “no changes to the employer contribution to federal employee health care coverage.”
A Congressional Research Service analysis found some room in the law for employer contributions. Timothy Jost, an expert in health care law who supports the Affordable Care Act, told PolitiFact the government clearly acted within its regulatory authority. A report from the conservative Heritage Foundation, which Cruz’s office pointed to, says the opposite.
Heritage says that the administration disregarded the law to give a “special Obamacare deal to Congress.”
The special deal: letting lawmakers keep the employer contribution toward health plans on new Obamacare marketplaces that Grassley assumed they would keep.
Our ruling
Cruz, reeling off signs Obamacare’s “wheels are coming off,” said the president “just granted all of Congress an exception.”
That sounds like lawmakers get to opt out of health care under the law. Quite the opposite — they’ll use new marketplaces alongside the uninsured and small businesses, just as it required. And it’s not even accurate to say they were excepted from some provision of the law: The law itself wasn’t clear.
Instead, they got a clarification about the law’s effect on contributions toward their health insurance. We rate Cruz’s claim False.
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