The answer, it seems, is not so much. The primary reason is that much of the funding for provisions of the law are not subject to annual appropriations, and are therefore able to continue operating even without Congressional budget approval. There are other details, of course, and Sharon Begley and Lewis Krauskopf summarize them nicely here.
The irony is that the GOP intended to disrupt the implementation of ObamaCare by passing a budget that stripped away funding for health reform. However, because the Democratically-controlled Senate is highly unlikely to approve such a bill, and the President is even less likely to sign such a bill into law, that decision is what is leading us down the road to a government shutdown. A shutdown that, in all likelihood, will have very little effect on ObamaCare implementation. It’s even more ironic when you consider that October 1 is the date that the health insurance exchanges–a central element of reform–are expected to begin enrolling people for coverage effective January 1, 2014. This explains why the President is hitting the road to educate the public about the exchanges and encourage them to get enrolled. October 1 could be a rather monumental day in its own right. Thankfully, it’s not the kind of monument that can be shut down by the federal government.
(Obamacare / shutterstock)
