A new survey of 2,500 federal employees and retirees found that 92.3 percent believe federal workers should keep their current health insurance and not be forced into ObamaCare. Only 2.9 percent say they should become part of the new health insurance exchanges.
I suspect a similar percentage of private sector employees would also like to keep their coverage, but most won’t get that option. What I’d like to know is how many of those federal employees so eager to avoid ObamaCare themselves supported forcing everyone else in it.
There’s more. The survey, conducted by FedSmith.com, “an information portal for sources of information impacting the federal community and those interested in the Federal Government’s activities,” found that 96.1 percent think federal retirees should be able to stay with their retirement health insurance. Only 3.9 percent think they should get “Medicare in lieu of their current option.”
To put it simply: Federal employees and retires almost unanimously prefer to stay in their generous taxpayer-funded health insurance program, known as the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP), rather than being dumped into liberalism’s two greatest monuments to government-run health insurance, ObamaCare and Medicare.
Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
Of course, we already knew that Internal Revenue Service employees don’t want ObamaCare. Their union, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), with 150,000 members, is urging members of Congress to reject a bill introduced by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, which would require all federal employees to enroll in ObamaCare.
And those mostly Democratic members of Congress hearing from the NTEU will certainly be sympathetic to the union’s message, since the members and their staffs have been whining for their own exemption from the law—which they recently got. The Obama administration has conveniently discovered an exemption in the language of the legislation—as if anyone ever had any doubt they would.
While members of Congress and their staffs will still be in ObamaCare exchanges, the federal government will continue to provide the same level of subsidies it has for years, about three-fourths of the cost of coverage, which means the government will chip in roughly $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.
The problem was that highly paid members of Congress and their staffs make too much money to qualify for taxpayer-provided subsidies under ObamaCare, and therefore they would have had to foot the whole health insurance bill themselves, easily costing $15,000 to $20,000 or more for a family policy.
However, all of those private sector taxpayers who make good salaries without access to employer-provided coverage and newly found sugar-daddy exemptions from the law will have to cough up that same price for coverage out of pocket. But that’s their problem for not having a good government job.
And federal employee unions aren’t the only ones complaining. Several non-government unions are being forced to renegotiate their health benefits packages because of provisions in the law, especially the one capping the tax break for very expensive plans. Those unions are not happy about having to reduce their hard-won benefits. They too believed Obama’s promise and got snookered.
This kind of hypocrisy goes a long way toward explaining why the American people have become so cynical about politics.
But we’re not done yet. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just revealed what lots of people believed all along: the real goal is a single-payer, government-run health care system.
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