Beth Cobert, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, may have to put her nomination to become the official OPM director on hold due to issues related to the Affordable Care Act, according to The Washington Post.
Here are three things to know about the issue.
1. Specifically at issue is how federal government applied the law to members of Congress. Once the exchanges launched in 2014, members of Congress and employees of "official offices" were supposed to leave the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, but they can still receive an employer contribution if they enroll in a specific ACA plan, according to the report. In a Wednesday statement, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said "any potential OPM Director needs to explain the unnecessarily secretive process that protects Members of Congress from the burden they imposed on American citizens. Congress should be required to live under the same healthcare laws they imposed for the rest of the country. That's just commonsense," according to the report.
2. The issue predates Ms. Cobert's appointment. Ms. Cobert has served as acting director since last summer, according to the report, but the OPM rules were issued in 2013.
3. Sen. Vitter called for a pause on Ms. Cobert's nomination Thursday. He said he wants a full explanation of why Congress wrote the rules the way they did. "Such a subsidy is not available to other Americans who purchase their health insurance on a federal or state-based exchange as the ACA mandated. Therefore this amounts to a special exemption for Congress," he wrote in a letter, according to the report.
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