>>said last night on PBS that about 5% of existing policyholders will be forced to make a change because:

Basically it's turning out that most individual policies aren't up to the new required minimum standards. Which confirms the impression that individual policyholders have had a lousy status quo even if they believe their policy is the greatest. Clearly parochialism rules, which is why these claims deserve closer scrutiny.

>>His point was that if they do get better coverage for less money then the ACA is a success, and vice versa. I agree that will be a key pass/fail test of the ACA.

The cap on profits is a great start. I knew the system was flawed when a single executive was paid >$1B on retirement. $1B sucked out of healthcare funding is an issue no matter how many policyholders are sharing the load.

>>There are other ingredients, though, such as cost controls (AKA Death Panels), subsidies and Medicaid expansion that might be equally important in the long run.

People may come to regret soundbites like "Death Panels" since neither public nor private schemes can afford to pay for all possible care even if the entire GDP is made available. If you think about it, the current substandard policies that are being cancelled effectively had death panels that declined or limited claims. Are people sure it's a scandal that such policies are deprecated? Going forward the lazy response is to leave physicians to act as society's executioners. The honest approach is to present funding and delivery options and let voters/policyholders choose, after which Death Panels will be needed to enact the people's will.