In your bullet list, you missed one of the big ones: The Dems shut down the government rather than have to be under Obamacare themselves.
Because while that is a great political theater, it is a largely false one, and as much as I like winning, I also don’t like misleading.
First, they are all under “Obamacare”. Nobody is exempted. Obamacare says you have to have insurance, and it has to meet minimum standards — both of which were true for the representatives and staff.
Second, the law specifically forces them OUT of the government worker health care plan, and requires them to purchase plans on the exchange. This is actually a “special exemption” in a way; a big employer is supposed to provide insurance. On the other hand, a big employer CAN shut down their own insurance, and instead pay a portion of the premium for their workers to join a health care exchange (this allows the big employer to avoid the fines).
BTW, for some people, once their employer modifies their health plans to meet Obamacare guidelines, the employees might actually prefer to have the choice of an exchange, rather than the one offering their employer might have. SO simply being put in an exchange is hardly much of a punishment, although the law requires them to sign up for the DC exchange, rather than allowing them to choose their own state exchanges.
Anyway, the actual VITTER amendment doesn’t change the fact that they have to buy insurance from the exchanges. It was simply to cut off government support for the premiums. Which in fact is a special exemption from Obamacare, but not for the workers, but for the GOVERNMENT itself.
Under the Vitter amendment, the federal government would be the one big employer who was “allowed” to kick some workers (congressional staff and congress) into the exchange WITHOUT having to pay a fine, or to pay a percentage of the premiums.
So it has nothing to do with them being “opted out” of Obamacare. It was really just a pay cut; under current law they, like all government employees and most private employees, had their employer covering some large percentage of their health costs, but with the Vitter amendment they would lose that employer match, and it would cost them thousands of dollars more.
IN only one sense was this special — it is true that, because Obama waived punishment for business, that some large companies can actually cut their workers without subsidizing them in the exchanges AND without paying a huge fine, for the next year.
Anyway, like I said, I do understand that this vote was a good one politically, because while it really didn’t make sense from a policy position, and was mostly just a nasty spiteful thing to do, it had “bad optics” all over it.