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Congress has already exempted itself from Public Option
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
09/08/09 6:41 PM EDT
One of the clearest messages from the Town Hall forums during the August congressional recess was that people want Congress to be covered by the same health care reform plan they impose on the rest of us.
Members of Congress presently get health insurance coverage through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which offers enrollees nearly 300 choices among a variety of plans, coverages and costs.
The FEHBP covers federal employees and retirees, as well as Members of Congress, though the latter have additional perks of office that make their health coverage far better than that available - or affordable - for the vast majority of working Americans.
Public anger may explain why the White House is now insisting that Congress has not exempted itself from the Public Option, most notably in this new "Reality Check" video on the White House web site featuring former ABC reporter Linda Douglas, who now flaks for Obama as communications director for the White House Office of Health Care Reform.
The problem is, according to The Heritage Foundation's Robert Moffitt, the White House assertion is "incorrect."
And in this video Moffit points to an amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-NV, during a House Ways and Means Committee meeting just before the recess began that would have required Members to be covered by the Public Option plan if they approve it for private citizens.
Predictably, however, the Heller amendment was defeated, with all 21 committee Democrats voting against it. That vote is indicative of the reality that any bill requiring Congress to be covered by the same health care as the public has the proverbial snow ball in Hades' chances of being enacted.
Moffitt is presently director of health policy studies at Heritage. During the Reagan administrtion, he was assistant director for congressional relations at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which manages the government's health care program. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I also served as a Reagan appointee with Moffit at OPM, during my pre-journalism career days). In short, Moffit knows Congress and he knows FEHBP.
Moffitt is awfully diplomatic in terming the White House video "incorrect." Something more along the lines of "outrageous propaganda" comes to my mind.
One thing is certain, though - as a journalist who presumably knows the critical importance of getting the facts, Linda Douglas ought to be ashamed of herself, especially since she covered Congress for nearly a decade and thus presumably knows a thing or two about how Members of Congress have given themselves all sorts of perks, including a special place in FEHBP.
Just because you signed up to be a political appointee and left the newsroom behind doesn't mean you have to check your journalistic integrity at the door.
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