>>By whose standards? Obamacare ensures that costs are going up, not down.

As opposed to the status quo? experts now say that within 5 years many in the middle classes won't be able to afford health insurance. The most likely way to solve that is to reduce standards/impose nanny legislation to try to reduce the price. You need to be careful- health workers are regarded as an asset practically everywhere and Texas once lost all its Obstetricians when conditions became too toxic. Which should not be a concern: the US could and should have the happiest providers and the best standard of care for the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ you pay.

>>Real reform could have been accomplished by allowing purchasing of health insurance across state lines and tort reform. This abomination needs to be repealed and replaced with something that actually stands a chance of lowering costs.

Will that solve the $47T Medicare hole? Sounds like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to me. For perspective, consider that the entire Iraq war cost less than $1T. Sorry, I have great faith in the US but I've yet to see some people acknowledge this real elephant in the room. People like Mike might as well forget about Medicare expectations in their waning years so he'd better start saving for himself as well as paying for yours; though even you may not receive the level of Medicare you might expect once the next generation realizes the dead-sea fruit left for them by wealthy oldsters.

As I keep saying, look to Australia and its compulsory government schemes to pay for predictable later needs: Australia now has more managed $ per citizen than any oil nation and as their asset grows, within a decade they'll have a nest egg of such massive proportions that their elderly can rest secure forever. What fools we all were not to follow suit a decade earlier. Our populations are aging so every year of delay is worth billions and eventually trillions of future taxpayer $.