Shutting down the shut down?

Seriously, what is going on in this country? A lot of people have asked me whether I feel anything related to the shut down or how it affects me. Personally, I'd say not very much. Obviously everyone talks about it and the media are getting more and more sensationalist about the number of hours, minutes and even seconds that the country has been 'shut down' and the latest I heard is that there might be rating consequences if the country really goes into default but still it's surprising how little it affects individuals on a daily basis (apart from those poor government officials, and I just read it's actually 800,000 of them - so quite a substantial number, that are being furloughed and are not getting paid - which is a disaster when you live from hand to mouth, unfortunately quite common here in NY and in other places as well).

Someone told me today in a typical American fashion that the US would be the only country to voluntarily send itself into bankruptcy while most of the European countries had 'real issues'. To be honest, I am starting to think that this country has serious issues if they cannot accept a simple decision that has basically been taken months, if not years, ago. What are they fighting about with regards to the Affordable Care Act (proper name for Obamacare which has been phrased Obamacare by its opponents/ republicans)? It's already gone into action I was told. In fact, people are in the process of signing up as I type this.

I guess it's all about the funding because it was sustained constitutional not too long ago by the supreme court ruling and in my opinion definitely is the right thing. That might be because I was born and raised in Europe but there are certain things that you might have to 'force' some people to get and apparently here health insurance is one of them... If they still refuse, they have every right to pay the fine which might sound ridiculous to some but actually many conservatives might end up doing. In some ways it's a non-issue though because I'd really like to see the amount of regular people that refuse to take out insurance if they can get it through their employer. Whatever it is, I really think they need to shut to down the freaking shut down so we can talk about important things such as halloween costumes and hurricane preparedness again...