Phrazemaster said:
Well my understanding is that vast swaths of the actual "law" remained unwritten, with the provision that they would be able to keep amending/writing it as they go...
While I am not a fan of that legislation it was birthed pretty much "written", however it was not the product of bi-partisan amendments (when being crafted). The oft repeated quote from Nancy Pelosi was "we have to pass it so we can read it." Not evidence of thoughtful deliberation. but written by staff with probable insurance industry influence. It is not expected that legislation of this scale, injecting itself over 1/6 of the private sector economy be perfect as drafted, and there have already been a couple amendments to fix the most egregious errors. Funding and the roll-out design has always been suspicious regarding long term viability, not to mention the numerous private interests offered exclusions by the executive. Literally changing the law by fiat.
I do not think the democrats expected the strong push back from the voting public. They lost their super-majority in the Senate before they could pass the senate version so had to instead use a budget correction procedure called reconciliation to amend the house version with a simple senate majority.
Which is the grossest kind of BS I ever heard. How do you pass a "law" that they can change anytime they damn well please? It is meaningless; it's a "law" only in the sense that you have to follow whatever they come up with next, which is just a form of dictatorship.
The ACA is pretty well fleshed out while there are probably some regulatory procedures that aren't finalized. The IRS is tasked with policing this so they are still ramping up that capability (oh boy my favorite branch of government... IRS). Instead of the law being amended there are valid criticisms of selective enforcement as the President decided which parts of the law to follow and which parts to ignore. There are more court tests pending but the supreme court blinked the last time so I am not optimistic that it could be that simply corrected.
Not to mention how much the health care industry has already adapted for the new paradigm. All those private practice doctors who retired or sold out to larger hospital groups are gone forever. It will be even harder now to create more competition in the healthcare trenches to lower prices. The fix is in.
And since when has government EVER repealed a major program...JR I think we are stuck with this! I pray I'm wrong!!!!
Your characterization of the ACA as being a moving target, more resembles the Dodd-Frank bill that basically set out goals and then tasked the regulatory bodies to write comprehensive (new) regulations. This uncertainty about unfinished and still changing regulations has been a proverbial axe hanging over the head of banking and business leaders for several years now preventing them from making firm plans for the future.
I have written before about how the super low bank borrowing costs (inter bank rates) has been a license to print money for under-captialized banks and they have taken advantage of that in the years since the collapse to build up their balance sheets. Now years after the crisis and supposed wrong doing, the regulators are now suing the big banks extracting obscenely huge fines and settlements. This very much looks like the government harvesting the very money that they pumped into those same balance sheets. The banks could never pay those fines 6 years ago, so where did the money come from? This is going on in plain sight. If they truly wanted to punish them they could have been even more effective with much smaller fines several years ago. Now this is just paying the price of doing business with the government as a partner.
Now to bring the housing collapse full circle Fannie and Freddie (still under government conservatorship since 2008) are talking about relaxing mortgage standards again to pump up home sales. It is argued that politicians have a short memory but come on, many homeowners still haven't recovered from the last time. We must keep down payments at rational levels for future mortgage safety.
JR
PS: Not to get too inside politics but did anybody notice that Holder (in contempt of congress) just resigned and the Justice department also did a massive document dump to congress related to "Fast and Furious", just in time for losing the senate? Yeah I know, probably just another coincidence. ;D
PPS: Speaking of the supreme court and federal government over reach, the SCOTUS recently over ruled the feds charging a fisherman using Sarbanes-Oxley. For those who don't remember that one after the Worldcom fraud the government made a federal crime of destroying evidence like shredding documents or disappearing emails (like the IRS?). The fishing boat captain managed to misplace some undersized grouper he caught.
He deserves a fine but not 20 years in some federal pen. Government force is too easily abused.
