There are times when Washington, D.C., seems particularly far away from Oregon.

Right now, for example, U.S. House Republicans have shut down the government to demand a one-year postponement of the Affordable Care Act, right after the state of Oregon sent out 260,000 letters telling people they now qualify for fast-track enrollment in the Oregon Health Plan – the Medicaid expansion at the core of health care reform. The law sets up the feds paying 100 percent of the costs of the expansion for the first three years, and 90 percent afterward.

House Speaker John Boehner demands defunding health care reform to reopen government.

So if somehow the House Republicans are granted their wish, are all those letters redirected to the Dead Letter Office?

The resolution passed by the House of Representatives Sept. 20 declares, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no Federal funds shall be made available to carry out any provision of” the Affordable Care Act.

Oct. 1, the first day the new health care exchange went online, 110,000 Oregonians logged on to see what was available, and many of them would qualify for federal subsidies to buy insurance. Do they all get a computer screen that reads, “Never Mind”?

We’d still have the exchanges listing different coverage plans, notes Cover Oregon spokeswoman Amy Fauver; they were set up by the state legislature as part of state health care reform before Congress ever got to the idea. But Sen. Jeff Merkley’s office points out that defunding or postponing would immediately stop the subsidies connected with the exchange, and the Medicaid expansion.

It would also end young adults staying on their parents’ policies until they’re 26, and the ban on insurance disqualifications based on pre-existing conditions.

Writing in the Capitol newspaper “The Hill” last week, Washington and Lee University law professor Timothy S. Jost said the resolution would also cut 70 percent of federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, used extensively by Oregon provide coverage for virtually all the state’s children.

Oregon’s budget is balanced because of $2 billion we got from the feds to try to be the poster state for making health care reform pencil out. Presumably, that money could be reclaimed -- although with the federal government’s agencies largely shut down, it could have trouble taking the money back from us.

Three years after the Affordable Care Act passed, a year and a half after it was upheld by the Supreme Court, a year after Barack Obama was handily re-elected against an opponent who pledged to “repeal Obamacare on day one,” Oregon has gone as deeply into health care reform as any state in the country.

And if, somehow, the president and the Senate caved in with a stunning earthquake-like rumble, and the entire operation were suddenly defunded – which Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says he’d consider a reasonable compromise – Oregon might have the longest way back of any state.

“It would be catastrophic,” says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a member of the Ways and Means Committee. “It would be hard to overstate how much time and effort has been spent to get us to where we are now. Billions of dollars have been spent by the insurance industry to comply with the law. People are changing medical practice patterns.

“Pulling the rug out from under them now would be extraordinarily disruptive, amazingly expensive and unfair to people who have counted on a bill that’s now three years old.”

It would be particularly disruptive to Oregon, which has had a deep buy-in to the new process from government, business, health care operations and insurance. As Blumenauer notes, Oregon has the second-largest number of insurance companies on its exchange of any state.

In Oregon, it can be hard to tell where the federal Affordable Care Act ends and Gov. John Kitzhaber’s health care overhaul begins. Being forced to separate them would require the kind of high-level surgery covered by hardly any insurance.

Washington, D.C., can seem particularly far from Oregon.

But not as far as Oregon would have to go if Congress somehow made us start over.

David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or dsarasohn@oregonian.com. See other writing at oregonlive.com/sarasohn/