Even if the crazies in Boehner’s House refuse to raise the debt limit.
It is not going to happen. President Obama would never agree to it, and the Senate would never vote for a delay/defund in return for a debt limit raise.
Now, you can argue that, despite what the (conservative) Supreme Court ruled, PPACA is somehow unConstitutional. But the highest Court in the land, the arbiter of Constitutionality, said it is.
You can hate it, abhor it, despise it, decry it, believe it is evil incarnate. But you aren’t going to get rid of it. PPACA is now the law of the land – and will be for the foreseeable future.
Many refuse to accept this, and therefore are making business decisions thru glasses fogged by ideology. That is a very, very dangerous way to operate a business.
I continue to be amazed that the GOP crazies are willing to go nuclear over a law based in large part on ideas promulgated by the Heritage Foundation and worthies like Senator Bob Dole, R KS. Methinks it has something to do with the “Obamacare” name and more specifically a desire to see the current occupant of the White House embarrassed/defeated/humiliated.
What will happen (I can’t believe I’m writing this) is the crazies in the House will refuse to raise the debt limit (to pay for stuff they already voted for!), leading to all kinds of financial confusion and disruption to individuals, businesses, state and local governments, school boards…pretty much everyone and everything.
How anyone could think this is a good idea is a mystery; if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, the Treasury will only be able to pay a portion of the bills it gets every day, bills for things like Social Security; Supplemental Security Income; Medicare; Medicaid; national security needs, including military salaries, military retirement, veterans’ benefits, and defense contractors; income tax refunds; federal employee salaries and retirement; law enforcement and operation of the justice system; unemployment insurance; disaster relief; goods and services sold to the government under contracts with small and large businesses; foreign aid; the list is endless.
Eventually those crazies will come to their senses, the debt ceiling will be raised, and hopefully enough of them will be voted out so we can get back to a sensible Congress peopled with sensible people.
If not, well, we get the government we deserve.
Regardless, PPACA will continue to be the law of the land.
Joe, as you know, all funding bills must originate in the House and if you think the current House is going to include any continuing funding for the ACA, you’re nuts. While the ACA may be “the law of the land” for the forseeable future, it will become the biggest unfunded, unenforced “law of the land.”
No doubt something needs to be done, but creating a system where large businesses are given financial incentive to cut worker hours to avoid health insurance costs and small businesses are stymied by their new, government-mandated responsibilities is not the answer.
The fact that then-Speaker Pelosi stood up and said they had to pass it so they could see what’s in it proves there was zero, none, nada, zip, zilch consideration for the unitended consequences such an Act would or could create.
I don’t have the answer, but I know the pile o’ merde we have before is isn’t it either.
Allen – thanks as always for the comment. If only Congress had been so diligent before approving the invasion of Iraq; now that qualifies for an unmitigated disaster. I find it ironically amusing that the present crop of crazies abhors something so consistent with past conservative theology.
As to which one of us is nuts, I’m willing to wager PPACA will continue to be funded and after the crazies go over the edge they’ll try to crawl back up. That is, unless saner heads prevail and they increase the ceiling.
Even Karl Rove is now shouting at the GOP to stop the nonsense talk about shutting down the government in an effort to defund the PPACA. See this op ed with links to the poll. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/09/19/the-morning-plum-panic-sets-in-among-gop-elites/?hpid=z2
All the major healthcare companies have reconfigured for the upcoming changes, billions of dollars have been spent to handle the additional coverage required under ACA. Private equity entities have invested heavily in the changes to take advantage of the opportunities under ACA. States have coordinated with the private sector to deliver the services.
Whatever your likes or dislike are regarding ACA, it is coming. It will happen… I am upset with both parties for not sitting down together and coming up with a better solution instead of just kicking the can down the road each year. We get what we deserve with the leaders we put in office each year.
Well said Paul.
The real test will come when and if, there is Repugnant in the White House (with a rising Latino population and GOP intransigence on immigration reform that may not happen for some time) and a Repugnant Congress, then the law will be No. 1 on their hit list with a bullet courtesy of the NRA. But by then, people may find that they like the law and will revolt if the Repugnants even hint that they are going after it.
Hopefully by then some of the bugs will be fixed and it will be something people will like, which is what the Repugnants are afraid of, but they are afraid of everything that happened after 1776.
I agree with you, Joe. The ACA is going to happen. The opposition party in every country tries to shames the current ruling party. They’re contrary, on principle. I just hope they come to their senses soon.
Based on the sometimes ugly, less than well thought out comments about PPACA, I sense that some of your readers are more interested in protecting the “vested interests” of the shrunken pool of health insurance companies. Even a cursory review of the past 50 years of the health insurance business would reveal a course of behavior by the carriers that predicted the conditions that led up to the enactment of PPACA in 2010. I have a difficult time digesting the argument that a shrinking health insurance market based on ever increasing health care costs had much of a future even for that shrinking group of Americans covered by their employer-sponsored plans. Does anyone really have a better idea of how we as a nation confront and manage the nation’s health care bill?