The Office of Personnel Management hasn’t said if the Federal Employee Health Benefits program can contribute premium payments toward health plans on the exchange. If the payments stop, it could cost Hill staffers thousands of extra dollars each year.

The uncertainty is leading to dozens of lawmakers and aides considering leaving Capitol Hill.

It is extraordinarily rare, to say the least, for the president of the United States to get involved in an inside-the-Beltway flap over the payment of health care premiums.

Yet the anger over the administration’s inability or unwillingness to resolve this issue is bipartisan and deep. The feared so-called brain drain of congressional staffers over rising health care costs has become a topic of constant conversation on Capitol Hill.