Why is nothing being done about the family glitch?

[Jim Lane]

16. I don't know whether he's ignoring it.

He's made some fixes through executive order -- some of which, candidly, were a little dubious in terms of his authority to do so unilaterally.

As to the family glitch, I don't see the vaguest shred of an argument that would justify his addressing it by executive order. It's just too fundamental of a problem, and fixing it would require increasing the government's expenditures. He really needs an "ACA fix" bill to address that and a few other things.

Has he sounded out any House Republicans about getting such a bill passed? I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if he raised the subject and they laughed in his face. No Republican who fears a Tea Party primary (which is pretty much all of them) is going to support a bill that does anything to Obamacare other than defund it.

Still, I agree with you to the extent of saying that Obama should at least try, publicly -- but more to create a 2014 campaign issue than in the expectation of getting anything done. A "fix" bill could address the family glitch and the problems caused by the refusal of many states to expand Medicaid. (The result of that is some people are too poor to get subsidies, truly a silly result. IIRC, it arose because the Supreme Court set aside the portion of the ACA that required Medicaid expansion. Thus, the bill as passed envisioned that everyone below the poverty line would be on Medicaid, and therefore wouldn't need subsidies.)

The RW likes to make a lot of noise about Congress supposedly "exempting itself" from Obamacare. It's nonsense, and to the extent that Congressmembers are treated differently from other federal employees it's because of the Grassley Amendment, pushed and support by Republicans. Nevertheless, a "fix" bill could also provide that members of Congress and their staffs are to be treated exactly the same way as other nonunionized civilian employees of the federal government. Then when they vote against it, their hypocrisy is obvious.