‘Not wanting it for themselves’ doesn’t mean anything. They have insurance. They were going to be treated like every other full-time employee for a business above 50 people: they must be provided insurance by their employer. They are provided insurance, so, they were fine. Sen. Grassley decided, for no accurately described reason, that he did not like this, and thus managed to get an amendment passed to it that stated that congressional staffers lose their federal insurance and must get it via the exchanges. However, this also meant that the staffers would essentially suffer a pay cut, since they would go from getting insurance provided to having to pay for it, so a ruling was issued by the Office of Personnel Management to get them subsidies to cover the difference, which was welcomed as fine by Sen. Grassley. Sen. Vitter, however,o tried to kill that, again, for no good reason. Vitter himself, and other congresspeople, would still get their insurance, of course. It would only be his staff who suffers. It should tell you something that he was trying to take away insurance from the people working under him.
End result:
1. Congresspeople/staffers were to be treated like other employees under the ACA, this was changed to make them use the exchanges: they were offered healthcare by their employer and were thus fine under the ACA (their plans would be covered by the same requirements of other plans). Sen. Grassley changed this to force them onto the exchanges.
2. In order to not randomly penalize congressional staffers, the money that would have paid their insurance would instead act as a subsidy on the exchanges. There is no end difference in the money except that now, unlike other employees, they must get insurance via the ACA exchanges. This is, in fact, the opposite of an exemption.
3. Sen. Vitter attempted to strip this provision and force his and other staffers (but not himself) to pay explicitly out of pocket for insurance. This failed.
and for the record, I admit this comes across as annoyed, and I want to clarify that this annoyance is not directed at anyone here, and is mostly for the stupid antics in congress that have gotten us to this point.