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Comment by jeremyt | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to summarize the objections without judging the objections themselves.

The exemptions that I'm referring to are being referred to as "waivers", and you can see a itemized list and description of each type of waiver here: http://heartland.org/policy-documents/six-types-obamacare-wa...

As to the abortion issue, it appears that I was slightly incorrect. The objection is mostly to the contraceptive mandate (free contraceptives for women). I still think there is some objection on the abortion issue, but frankly I'm not familiar with it so I can't say whether it's justified or not.

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Nothing on the linked page says anything about "Congress is exempt."

Everything I've read on the subject says exactly the opposite, that Congress and their staff are forced to purchase healthcare from the Healthcare Exchanges.

This pages says:

http://www.factcheck.org/2013/05/congress-and-an-exemption-f...

The law’s final language on this, written by Sen. Tom Coburn, says that: “the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are — (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act.”

I admit that this may be a fuzzy edge case that I'm not completely familiar with, but I think the objection is not that Congress is completely exempt from the act but that the president had the executive branch issue a rule that allowed the government to subsidize congressional health plans, where this is not allowed in any other business.

This is technically separate from the waiver objection.

I know there's an objection here, so if you can find a reference to it I would appreciate the clarification.

Here's the court decision: http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Korte-G...

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