TWO MORE OBAMACARE UPDATES

1…IRS Workers are Exempt from Obamacare While Making the Rest of Us Comply

Here are some excerpts from a report in the Washington Examiner.
IRS employees have a prominent role in Obamacare, but their union wants no part of the law. National Treasury Employees Union officials are urging members to write their congressional representatives in opposition to receiving coverage through President Obama's health care law.

Like most other federal workers, IRS employees currently get their health insurance through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which also covers members of Congress. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp offered the bill in response to reports of congressional negotiations that would exempt lawmakers and their staff from Obamacare.

Camp spokeswoman Allie Walker said.  If the Obamacare exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for the president, vice president, Congress and federal employees.
END OF WASHINGTON EXAMINER EXCERPTS.

2…I also learned that Obamacare Call Center Offers No Health Insurance Benefits for Employees.
Earlier in the year, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was excited to announce the opening of an ObamaCare call center.  It would be open 24 hours a day, and it’s purpose was to educate Americans about Obamacare and to help people get “affordable” health care.

One of the branches of that call center will go live in a couple months in Concord, California inside Contra Costa County.  It was big local news in that county, and was supposed to be an economic boom to that area in California.

People were going to be able to get fulltime jobs and have health insurance.  People even left their current fulltime jobs to become fulltime customer service representatives, working for this call center.  Only 204 positions were available, but over 7,000 people applied.

So, here’s the irony.   Half of those positions turned out to be “part time intermittent” jobs that offered zero health insurance benefits, in spite of “staff reports listing all 204 jobs as full-time and a job posting saying the same.”  

As one anonymous employee of the call center said, “What's really ironic is working for a call center and trying to help people get health care, but we can't afford it ourselves.”

The Contra Costa Times reported that it was a surprise to the county supervisor, Karen Mitchoff:
 “‘The battle for the call center was over jobs with good working wages and benefits; I never dreamed they would be part-time,’ said Karen Mitchoff, who has heard from complaining constituents and expressed her ‘extreme displeasure with how it was handled’ to call center supervisors.  One recent hire, who last week learned the job would be part-time, said the new ‘intermittent’ employees feel like they've been used as a political tool, and many now regret applying for the positions.”