Chief Justice John Roberts should receive health insurance coverage under the law he helped uphold, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Monday.
The senator singled out Roberts, the conservative justice who wrote the majority opinion last summer upholding the 2010 health care law, in explaining the motivation behind the amendment during an interview Monday on “Fox & Friends.”
“I think Congress should never exempt themselves from a law,” Paul said. “But then again, I think John Roberts, you know, he loves Obamacare so much. He should get it.”
In an interview with The Daily Caller, Paul said that he will introduce an amendment requiring all federal employees — Supreme Court justices and congressional staffers alike — to receive health insurance through the exchanges under the Affordable Care Act rather than through taxpayer-funded subsidies. On “Fox & Friends,” Paul said that it’s hypocritical for Roberts to receive a federal employee subsidy.
“He’s not part of Obamacare,” he said. “So he makes the rest of America, through I think convoluted constitutional logic, he makes us get Obamacare but he’s exempt. So I have an amendment that I will introduce that we have written up and we will introduce that says all the federal government gets Obamacare, including federal employees and including John Roberts.”
A ruling last month by the Office of Personnel Management that will allow congressional staffers to continue receiving employer contributions for health care coverage sparked outrage on the right. An amendment put forth by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) would reverse the OPM’s decision and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggested last week that he’s preparing a court challenge to the OPM’s ruling, saying he hopes to ensure “that members of Congress and their staffs are not shielded from the harmful effects of this law that every other American will experience.”
