It's no secret that Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) hates his healthcare insurance now that it's covered by the Affordable Care Act. Why, the poor beleaguered Republican doesn't even want it anymore, he says on his Congressional website.
On another issue, reports have also surfaced this week that some Members of Congress are considering legislation that would exempt themselves and their staff from the insurance exchanges they are required to join as part of Obamacare. Ironically, the Obama administration, the White House staff, and Department of Health and Human Services' bureaucrats writing thousands of pages of regulations to implement this law, are not subject to the same requirements being forced on others.
He fails to mention that the requirement that Congress members and their staff must participate in the health insurance exchanges provided by the Affordable Care Act was introduced by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley tucked this amendment into the act at the last minute so that Congress members and their staffs would be subject to the law in the same way ordinary citizens are, and that they might be moved to improve coverage if they and their staff members found that their own coverage required improvement.
Sen. Burr won't be leading that charge. But he's doing his part, safeguarding Americans from a "disastrous bill [sic]." And how will he be doing that?
Let me be clear, I have long been a vocal opponent of Obamacare and prefer to repeal it in its entirety so that no one is subject to it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, c'mon, why doesn't Sen. Burr get the ball rolling by exempting himself? If he considers repeal salubrious and wants to challenge the Affordable Care Act written by Congress and signed into law by the president, why doesn't he start the process himself?
Oh! Wait! Here's why the clever lawmaker from North Carolina plans to keep his Obamacare: It's his form of protest.
However, as I stated this week, if the American people are going to have to suffer the consequences of this disastrous bill [sic], then Members of Congress and their staff need to remain under Obamacare as well.
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Yes! Sen. Burr has courageously stepped forward into the roll of flagboy while other members of Congress gird themselves for battle over whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act -- or instead to fix problems only for themselves and their staffs while letting the general public deal with any problems or challenges our own damn selves. Which is particularly difficult for those of us in states whose governor and legislatures have spurned expanded Medicaid and other benefits of the Affordable Care Act.
So superior to the "great unwashed" do these legislators see themselves, in fact, that these Congress members won't stop at merely repealing the Grassley Amendment of the Affordable Care Act: they want to throw the unwashed baby out with the unwashable bathwater.
But don't expect Sen. Burr to rush to the front. He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders and the burden of protest to bear. And he can't handle all that without coverage for chiropractic care.
Plus, our senator can't jeopardize his healthcare while he's using it to protest with.