>>Yes. That's one feature - the only one - that made any sense to me.

Few Americans are aware of how broad the ACA provisions are. How about encouraging/funding electronic health records and interoperability? Believe it or not, a huge chunk of ACA cost and anticipated saving came from this, which now seems to be forgotten amidst all the binary hostile posturing.

> How about telling a 45 year old that he has to cover Medicare costs for people who systematically underfunded the program during those wonderful inflationary years when every dollar properly underwritten now would be worth 100?
> What does that have to do with the ACA?

If the ACA requirement for the 45 year old to insure himself is so undesirable... why should be be required to pay for somebody else who preferred to accumulate assets rather than paying their own fair share? That's not common sense.

>I had a very quadruple bypass in 1988 with lots of complications that required 6 more admissions and didn't go bankrupt
>I was self employed then and carried a major med plan with a 5K deductible - large by the standards then.
>All that wound up costing me less than $5K.

30 years ago, the world was a kinder place. School costs were reasonable and the Medicare deficit still would have been manageable, if taxpayers back then had been willing to pay their fair share. And insurers weren't as quick to hit policyholders with rescission when they got sick. Whereas by 2012, many policyholders were pushed onto plans that did not roll over every year, instead requiring a new policy on which pre-existing conditions could be imposed. IOW things changed from what really were the good old days.