It is starting to look like governors can cause PPACA to topple merely by stepping out of the way and watching it collapse as a result of its own unwieldyness.
All they need to do is to refuse to set up state-run exchanges for health insurance.
The law says that if a state doesn't set up a state-run exchange, the feds will step in and set one up and run it in that state; however, some people say that the actual language of the law (if upheld as it is written by the inevitable Court challenge) that if the feds set up an exchange in a state, residents of that state won't be eligible for the federal subsidies that are available for participants in state-run exchanges.
As of the original November 16 deadline for a decision, at least 30 states had not opted to develop state-run exchanges. HHS has extended the decision deadline to Dec 14.
If more than half the states decline to set up state-run exchanges, the burden of administration will fall squarely and exclusively on the federal government, yet when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress, they did not provide any funding to the government to run the programs. Now there are intensive negotiations on reducing the rate of growth in federal spending going forward: not quite the ideal time to be adding a huge new staffing requirement to a federal department, eh?
More details
here.
It would be ironic indeed for the mandate to be found unconstitutional, for the law to be allowed to stand anyway under an alternate theory (the taxing power) and then for the law to fail after all because of how incredibly poorly it was drafted.
Thanks to Judge Roberts, the only way to save it will be through a tax increase, and right now all the discussion over tax increases are to deal with the existing deficit. None of the funding shortfalls discussed herein are yet included in the spending baseling.
