Obamacare: Day 1

By Quinn Phillips Yesterday, after Congress failed to pass a budget to fund the federal government, large portions of the government shut down. National parks and monuments were closed, 800,000 federal employees were sent home, and numerous government Web sites stopped working — even the National Zoo's "PandaCam," showing a live feed of a mother panda and her baby online, went dark. But one government service was available yesterday that wasn't the day before: the new online health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare"), the controversial 2010 law. Ironically, an attempt by the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives to defund or delay the Affordable Care Act is the reason why so much of the federal government shut down. Funding for much of the federal government expired at the end of September, and House Republicans have insisted on passing new budget resolutions that would remove funding for, or delay, significant portions of the law. These budget resolutions have all been voted down by the Democratic-led Senate, which has instead voted to continue funding the government at current levels without any changes to the health-care law (the House has not voted on the Senate's budget resolution, which would probably pass if put to a vote, ending the shutdown). Meanwhile, the online exchanges that are the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act have gone into effect, since the subsidies they offer to qualifying individuals and...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs