As we noted last week, Congress screwed up the language of their health care bill at their own expense. But, thanks to Obama administration lawyers, members and their immediate personal staff might be able to keep their existing health insurance coverage — for now. The problem, as Heritage and others noted, is that the bill’s language says they have legislated themselves out of their own coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and into the newly created health insurance exchanges they’re imposing on the states. Without the timely …
In the mad dash to meet their strictly political deadline for passing Obamacare, lawmakers wound up victimizing many people. Including themselves. Members of Congress and Congressional staff currently enjoy a wide variety of excellent health insurance options, courtesy of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). One of the more commonplace campaign promises of federal lawmakers is that they will fight to give ordinary Americans the same kind of choice and competition among the wide variety of private health plans that they have. Obamacare doesn’t begin to deliver on that …
In order to secure the votes to pass a health care bill, Senate Democrats were forced to scrap the widely-unpopular public option. But before chalking this up as a victory for opponents of government-run health care, though, its replacement deserves a closer look. As described in Sec 1334 of the Senate bill, the Director of the Office for Personnel Management (OPM) would now be charged with sponsoring a set of multi-state health plans to compete with private insurers. As a recently published detailed analysis by Heritage’s Bob Moffit and Kathryn …
In the wake of widespread public backlash over his eleventh-hour deal to get increased federal taxpayer Medicaid funding for his vote, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has been hitting the media circuit, assuring reporters that he won’t vote for any merged health care bill that funds abortions with taxpayer dollars or has a government-run health insurance plan. “There is zero chance (of a public option),” he said to The Chadron Record. “I’ve made it so clear. It isn’t going to happen.” But Sen. Nelson has already allowed a “public option” to …
The Center for American Progress has a new report out titled “Competitive Health Care: A Public Health Insurance Plan that Delivers Market Discipline”. Listing everything that we disagree in their report would result in something much longer than a blog post, but since they mention us by name, we need to make one fact clear: including a public plan in a Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) health insurance reform model would destroy a competitive health insurance market. Here is what CAP writes: Promoting choice among health insurance plans to …
When selling his vision for health care reform to the American people, President-elect Barack Obama promised: “I will establish a new national health plan, similar to the plan available to federal employees and members of Congress, that gives every American the opportunity to buy affordable health coverage.” The Heritage Foundation has long been an advocate for organizing a national health exchange based on the same model that delivers care to members of Congress; the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). The problem is that both Obama’s plan and the plan …
