Und, was gerne vergessen wird: für die Armen, die sich die neue Versicherungspflicht nicht leisten können, ist eigentlich die Ausweitung von Medicaid vorgesehen (und nicht eine Strafsteuer - die ist nur für diejenigen, die es sich eigentlich leisten können).
Das ist die Zuständigkeit von den Bundesstaaten (mit Kostenübernahme durch die Föderation). Aber: auch da blockieren die Republikaner - und wenn nicht, werden sie von den ACA-Gegnern massiv bedrängt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10…lth-care-law.html?hp&_r=0
"... One leading target is Emmett W. Hanger Jr., a Republican state senator from the deeply conservative Shenandoah Valley, who prides himself on “going against the grain.” As chairman of a commission weighing one of the thorniest issues in Virginia politics, whether to expand Medicaid under Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, he is feeling heat from the Republican right.
His openness to expansion has aroused the ire of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Dressed in emerald green T-shirts bearing the slogan “Economic Freedom in Action!” its members are waging what the senator calls “an attempt to intimidate me” in Richmond and at home.
.,..
Expanding Medicaid, a joint federal-state program for the poor, is critical to the law’s goal of covering the nation’s 48 million uninsured. Hospitals and insurers were also counting on more Medicaid patients to make the economics of the law work. For states, the terms seemed attractive: The federal government would pay 100 percent of the cost of new enrollees for the first three years, 90 percent after that.
But in June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of Medicaid expansion. The ruling opened the door for conservative opponents of the law. Americans for Prosperity, with paid staff members in 34 states, walked through it. So did another group, Tea Party Patriots, which recently gave $20,000 to organizers of a referendum drive to put the question of Medicaid expansion on the Arizona ballot.
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