WASHINGTON BUREAU — The Senate Finance Committee has agreed that members of Congress and their staffers ought to use any health insurance purchasing "exchange" system created by the panel's health reform bill.
Member passed a congressional health exchange use requirement amendment Tuesday by unanimous consent.
The amendment was proposed by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the highest-ranking Republican member of the committee.
"The more that Congress experiences the laws we pass, the better the laws are likely to be," Grassley said.
Grassley noted that members of Congress and their staffers now participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
The exchange system that would be established by the Finance Committee's America's Healthy Future Act bill and other health reform bills circulating in Congress would let individuals without employer-sponsored health coverage, and possibly other consumers, buy coverage at group rates through a system that would be modeled after the federal employees' program.
The exchange system would try to give participants the same kind of choices and options for health care coverage that federal employees get.
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