Just now on CNN, the hosts will reading recent viewer e-mails about health care reform. Among them was an e-mail attacking the new law. If health care reform is so good, the writer wanted to know, why are politicians exempting themselves from it?

I've heard critics of the bill, from Republican senators to random internet writers, say this many times. And it's frustrating, because it's not true.

As I've written previously, under the new law, members of Congress and their staffs must enroll in the new insurance exchanges. Those are the exact same exchanges through which millions of other individuals will be buying their coverage.

The law didn't originally read that way. In the first draft, lawmakers and their staffs got to keep their present employer-sponsored insurance, just like most Americans will. Republicans introduced amendments that would require the members and staff to enroll in the exchanges, presumably in an effort to make them look bad. They assumed that no representative or Senator would voluntarily relinquish the coverage they get from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

But the Democrats did just that.