It would be about as effective as a state law declaring the Federal Income Tax null and void.
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As I pointed out here at the time, the decision to oppose rather than participate in designing be ACA was a huge gamble with an equally big downside if Republicans lost the bet; Republicans could have extracted *major* concessions from the Democrats on matters such as “tort reform”, exclusive access by private insurers and wider state latitude in designing the exchanges if they had chosen to negotiate rather than simply oppose as it because clear the ACA might pass,
Instead, when Republicans failed to sweep the elections, conservatives were stuck with no substantive tort reform, mandatory NFP participation, and Federal control over most aspects of exchange design, with mandatory Federal exchanges set up in states which refused to set up their own.
I certainly hope that the decision to obstruct rather than negotiate made people feel *really* good at the time, because the long-term cost of that short-term political high is the permanent establishment of the ACA on Democrat terms.
And don’t kid yourself: the ACA is here to stay: once voters - including many “conservative” voters - discover that the exchanges will (for example) make it much easier to start a business without leaving their families uninsured) it’s going to be a *very* popular program.
And the irony is this: “exchanges” and “mandates” as originally designed were *conservative* programs intended to foster individual self-reliance and personal responsibility, and one of the most successful existing programs was created by conservative legislators in a conservative state (Utah).
Now however, the Democrat party is going to get credit for *their* version of the same idea - handed to them politically on a platter by Republicans who gabled away the likely chance to implement the program in a far more conservative form.
And to add insult to injury, all this happened when the Democrats were in internal disarray and the party was headed by the the worst negotiator to hold that office in the last hundred yeas - a pushover, really - and the Democrats couldn’t have created the ACA in it’s current form without the assistance of congressional Republicans determined to fight a losing battle.
And as I watch the house Republicans gear up to fight a losing battle to preserve “tax breaks for high earners” (as it’s portrayed in the media), I suspect that “the past is prologue” as regards the upcoming budget negotiations.
Instructive and erudite, but like the worm ouroboros, what you wrote leads back on itself but nowhere there can be a successful outcome for me or my progeny, in the matter of this Affordable Care Act edict some S. C. conservatives see as unjust and tyrannical.
“the irony is this: ‘exchanges’ and ‘mandates’ as originally designed were *conservative* programs intended to foster individual self-reliance and personal responsibility”
That’s too common to be ironic. Where do you think Cap n Trade came from, or the earned income tax credit, or income tax withholding, etc. From the minds of people like Newt Gingrich, whom I’ve heard described as a “frugal socialist.” He takes the Welfare State and massive government intrusion into the economy for granted, which is only reasonable. Then he looks for ways to shift responsibilities back to individuals, which seems prudent. But the resulting programs expand government further, which shouldn’t be the object. Ah, you say, socialists would expand it even further than that. It’s a chess game, and we’re sacrificing for position.
Only they never stop there, and it is painfully obvious the mandate, the exchange, etc. will be a stepping stone toward an inevitable single payer system and the complete nationalization of healthcare. Why do we play along? Because we’re still the stupid party.