WSJ: Yes, Obama really is giving Congress an ObamaCare exemption

You might have seen a lot of things people post on Facebook, claiming Congress has exempted itself from ObamaCare, followed by snickers from liberals at the gullibility of some conservaties who will just believe anything negative that's said about ObamaCare.

Here's your real story, and the only thing worse than the sweetheart favor Obama is giving Congress is the way he's doing it - and why. The excerpt is long but that's necessary to get the context of what's happening:

The Affordable Care Act requires Members of Congress and their staffs to participate in its insurance exchanges, in order to gain first-hand experience with what they're about to impose on their constituents. Harry Truman enrolled as the first Medicare beneficiary in 1965, and why shouldn't the Members live under the same laws they pass for the rest of the country? That was the idea when Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley proposed the original good-enough-for-thee, good-enough-for-me amendment in 2009, and the Finance Committee unanimously adopted his rule. Declared Chairman Max Baucus, "I'm very gratified that you have so much confidence in our program that you're going to be able to purchase the new program yourself and I'm confident too that the system will work very well."

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Harry Reid revised the Grassley amendment when he rammed through his infamous ObamaCare bill that no one had read for a vote on Christmas eve. But he neglected to include language about what would happen to the premium contributions that the government makes for its employees. Whether it was intentional or not, the fairest reading of the statute as written is that if Democrats thought somebody earning $174,000 didn't deserve an exchange subsidy, then this person doesn't get a subsidy merely because he happens to work in Congress. But the statute means that about 11,000 Members and Congressional staff will lose the generous coverage they now have as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Instead they will get the lower-quality, low-choice "Medicaid Plus" of the exchanges. The Members -- annual salary: $174,000 -- and their better paid aides also wouldn't qualify for ObamaCare subsidies. That means they could be exposed to thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket insurance costs. The result was a full wig out on Capitol Hill, with Members of both parties fretting about "brain drain" as staff face higher health-care costs. Democrats in particular begged the White House for help, claiming the Reid language was merely an unintentional mistake. President Obama told Democrats in a closed-door meeting last week that he would personally moonlight as HR manager and resolve the issue. And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, that's about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.

So to summarize, Congress wigged out because having to live under ObamaCare would hike their premiums and those of their staffs, and in exchange they would get lower-quality coverage without being eligible for subsidies. They didn't understand this would happen when they voted for it because a) they didn't read it; b) they just believed the projections of ObamaCare-friendly analysts; or c) they were of a mindset that they had to ram it through while they had the chance, and whatever ended up being wrong with it they would just fix later. But they've run into a problem. Since Republicans now control the House, it is no longer possible to pass legislative fixes to ObamaCare without Republican votes. And in order to get their support, you have to address problems with ObamaCare that concern Republicans. You'd have to get rid of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (aka the death panel). You'd have to get rid of the employer and individual mandates. You'd have to get rid of the onerous tax increases. You'd have to do a lot of things. And Democrats don't want to fix any of those problems. They only want to fix the problems that affect them. So Obama's solution is to pretend the wording of the law doesn't mean anything, and that he can make any adjustment he wants to it just by writing regulatory rules. This is how he got away with delaying the employer mandate until 2015, when the law clearly says it has to go into effect on January 1, 2014. He has no legal authority to make that regulatory adjustment, just as he has no legal authority to make the change that spares Congress the same problems everyone else will have to deal with. But he just goes ahead and makes them anyway. The GOP-controlled House actually offered him legislative authorization to delay the employer mandate until 2015, but Harry Reid refuses to take it up in the Senate and Obama said he would veto it anyway. Why? Because he would also have to delay the individual mandate and he doesn't want to do that. Why deal with legislation he doesn't like when he can just use the regulatory regime to do whatever he wants, regardless of what the law says? That's where we are with ObamaCare. The law as written is awash in problems and contradictions, and Democrats only want to fix the ones that bother them. Since they can't get a legislative fix without addressing problems that concern Republicans, they just pretend they are not subject to the law and do whatever they want through executive authority that has no constitutional basis. When you hear Democrats insist "the law is here to say," what they are really doing is trying to cut off all debate about why the law needs to be repealed, because if that discussion happens, it exposes the many problems of which these are just a few examples. They desperately want to avoid that conversation, so they pretend there is no point in having it. Let's have it.