Trump Make it Happen

This is going to backfire spectacularly

Federal lawmakers and their staff members get generous health insurance subsidies, administratively provided by OPM, without a congressional appropriation—just like the cost-sharing subsidies recently struck down as unconstitutional by the Federal Court of the District of Columbia.

Congressional leaders begged President Obama to fix their mess for them. It worked. In August 2013, the president’s OPM said FEHBP subsidies would be available for congressmen enrolling in health exchange plans.

This was a bold move, even for Team Obama. Not only did the original statutory language fail to provide insurance subsidies, but OPM also had no authority under Chapter 89 of Title 5 of the U.S. Code to provide FEHBP subsidies to non-FEHBP plans. In fact, as Politico reported , OPM had concluded—before the president intervened—that it had no such authority.

The scheme then went from the bold to the ridiculous. In the FEHBP, under Section 8901(6) of Title V, the health plans must be “group” plans. So, no problem: OPM certified the DC SHOP exchange, reserved for firms with fewer than fifty employees, as the health insurance exchange for Congress. All Congress had to do was to somehow turn itself into a small business, with fewer than fifty employees. And, incredibly, that is exactly what unnamed congressional bureaucrats did: They submitted paperwork identifying each chamber of Congress as a small business, [9] employing forty-five people apiece.