>>Then tell me - why was the employer mandate pushed back?

Because employers said they'd bail and there was a lot of uncertainty. This is not about static positions to be clung to no matter what. Or as Keynes put it, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

>>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.

You'd better Google "poll ACA mandate" - whatever script you're reading from is obsolete. Chicken Little has taken a drubbing- or as one pollster put it, "the more people know about the program, the more they like it."

>> 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.

As good an example as any of the way partisan politics has cost the US a generations's advancement. That case ought to have nothing to do with the ACA or another opportunity to barrack Barack,rather it's to do with the attempt to legislate by fiat/bypass the democratic process rather than going back to Congress for clarification.

>>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.

The choice of words betrays the script. ;-) The 300,000 members from Anthem's small business plans were not "thrown" anywhere- because there is no mandate for small business. I assume you know that. A more reasonable interpretation is that the exchanges had better plans for small businesses and their 300,000 employees than the sort of plan they used to have access to. They voted with their feet.

>>Many reports of companies with 15-25 people struggling to deal with keeping a medical plan where premiums rising over 20%

Many reports of companies with 15-25 people realizing that the plans and subsidies via the exchange simply are a better option.

>>Finally, unemployment is falling for several reasons, and some don't fit your narrative.

The narrative is that when unemployment is low, firms compete for good people. That's a truism.