>>>>Re: Healthcare. When the employer mandate kicks in, an estimated 20 million people are likely to lose their insurance and get thrown onto the exchanges. Some will get better plans. Some will get worse plans. And some will probably get something similar to what they had.
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>>That Chicken Little prediction is superseded. In 2011, McKinsey found that 30% of employers would drop coverage after 2014. However, by earlier this year a Kaiser Family survey found that fewer than 10% percent of employers plan to drop coverage. And the very latest 12 December 2014 published stats are saying that only 1% of employers plan to drop coverage in 2015.
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>>Unemployment is falling and the employment landscape is changing and employers remember why they volunteered to provide healthcare plans in the first place: to compete for workers. Employers may not like the mandate, but unsurprisingly a majority of workers do according to recent surveys. Employers are not going to cut off their noses to spite their faces and see the best employees vote with their feet. The downside to all this is that penalty revenue was costed into some of the budget plans to the tune of tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars so if employers aren't going to co-operate with Chicken Little and pay penalties, Republicans are going to inherit some big budget holes.
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>Then tell me - why was the employer mandate pushed back?
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>If a majority of workers like the mandate - then maybe you could explain the recent mid-term elections. I'll save you the trouble. The statement about working liking the mandate is incorrect - nearly every major poll, whether CNN, ABC/Washington Post, WSJ, etc shows unfavorable survey numbers for ACA/mandate. Right now I would bet some Democrats are secretly hoping that the Supreme Court rules against subsidies in the Halbig/Burwell case, to take the issue off their hands in the 2016 election.
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>By the way, Anthem lost almost 300,000 members in the first nine months of this year - 15% of their enrollment. Many were thrown onto/switched to the individual exchanges.
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>Many reports of companies with 15-25 people struggling to deal with keeping a medical plan where premiums rising over 20%
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>Finally, unemployment is falling for several reasons, and some don't fit your narrative.

It is getting scary how often we agree,

What's even scarier is how often I agree with your even scarier bro, Mr. B. We don't agree on a thing politically but I respect him completely. He served our country in combat. I didn't like the war but always respected the men and women who have fought and died for this country. I grew up in the Vietnam war era and could have easily been sent off on a plane to Southeast Asia. Forturnately my draft number was way down the list and I was not sent. Had buddies who fought and died there.

I therefore declare this John Baird Day on the UT. I hope you appreciate him even if you're a flaming leftie like me.