Every  constraint on choice isn't excessive--minimum wage and the eight hour day are desirable constraints on the choices of capitalists, as is the FDA and the FTC--but some  constraints ARE excessive.  Attempts to force the economy to work the way we want it to usually haven't been too successful. And forcing individuals to buy a product is something I can't accept. Single payer would make more sense.

  It will be good if things work out the way Ocean-Kat says they will, but I don't know if they will.

I don't think "this is a small portion of our population" is a functional argument about those unhappy about Obamacare exchange results. Because the exchanges are a program targeted to the minority who do not have coverage from employers! It's for those previously uninsured and for those previously buying in the individual market, that's the target users, a minority.

(Until, that is, the government and the majority finds out what subsidies might end up costing them in taxes, and whether they feel it is worth it. Let me be clear where I am coming from here: if it's successful, that cost could be like zero! And lower the cost of employer-provided insurance to boot. Either that or employers will just start to get out of the business of providing it because it's cheaper to pay their employees to buy from the exchange.)

I think the best argument in support of the Obamacare exchanges is that the same system is working in Massachusetts.  Period.

Unfortunately, so far I also think Romney and his former MA people do seem to have a point that they were better at setting it up. We wait to see whether they are wrong.

You guys that are arguing that these were shoddy plans and not real insurance are not going to get anywhere convincing people who lost them. Because all of them weren't. I don't know how many of them, but neither do you.

I know for a fact, because my spouse had one. It was an Emblem Health plan, very respectable company, now offering other plans in the NY exchange. The plan was high deductible in order to qualify to be used with a Health Savings Account to cover that deductible. That annual deductible, BTW, wasn't any higher than the highest one being offered by some Obamacare plans, certainly not higher than the $6,000 or so that the new law requires, it was lower than that. But it also offered preventive care free of charge like a full annual physical. It was a Preferred Provider Plan, where you could use their network of doctors for full reimbursement (which was a large network across the country) or go out of network to any doctor or specialist with a 20% co-pay, without any restrictions and no referrals required. Not only that, as of 2010, it also already included a lot of Obamacare provisions, as stated on page 2 of this 69 page PDF booklet.

For whatever reasons, they decided to discontinue the plan as of Dec. 31. And to offer different plans. I don't really understand all the reasons yet, I don't think anyone really does. It's surely financial. This graph from a Forbes article by one of the gripers gives a clue:

Now, insurers can’t decide eligibility — or even tweak premium rates — based on applicants’ medical histories. In the individual-coverage market, we’re all being billed a much higher blended rate that reflects the needs of people with bigger health problems.

Spinning it that they were all shitty plans isn't going to play because a lot of people who had them know they weren't. Rather, the only argument that's going to work is the one along the lines of what Mike W. is making. That people who don't qualify for a subsidy and will be paying more for a different plan than they were used to will have to eat that for a while so that we can get going on covering everybody and thereby start reforming the health care system and it's costs.

The eligibility rating thing is key, key to understanding what is really going on. Yes, you can't be dropped anymore from that plan you liked or be hit with major raises in rates once you start making claims. But that's not the full story of what's going to happen as we go forward. As Ezra Klein has stated, the key to solving a lot of this trouble is the sign up of healthy young people! If that doesn't happen, EVERYONE'S premiums will go up! Not just those griping now! A certain profit above costs is allowed by this law! So premiums will go up for many more if the healthy don't sign up! Conversely, if it does happen, if lots of healthy young people sign up, everyone's premiums may go down within a year or two, including for the currently disgruntled! If it doesn't happen, a lot more people will be griping and the GOP and the currently disgruntled will say "I told ya so." If it does, the griping will stop and it will be just like the introduction of Medicare or Medicare Part D, where when people finally got adjusted to it, they liked it.

This is the major reason why the website problems are extremely dangerous to the whole program.

Not to mention, the inability of those who have been dropped as of  Dec. 31 who have to use the Federal exchange to shop and carefully consider the plans being offered in time to continue coverage is causing a lot of anxiety.  In the past when a plan they liked was discontinued, they were not told they would have only a two week period to investigate alternatives for a major decision that might affect lots of other life and financial considerations.  And that two weeks is if the administration is lucky and gets the system working by the end of the month. The extension of any deadline isn't a workable alternative. Because the insurance companies have already transitioned away from the plans they are ending and into other things, either in the exchanges or out of them. The website had to work and it didn't, it really is a disaster that it didn't. Especially if a lot of young people don't sign up in the open period. Because then the insurance companies will be able to raise rates on everyone in the pools to cover the pool they have at the time.

Thanks for the info. See below for how I expected it to work. I even considered that too big a subsidy to the financial-medical complex given that the federal government is the insurer of last resort for everything.

I totally understand, and totally agree. It's not like Canada doesn't have corporate lobbyists and special interests; our politicians are as eager to sell out as yours are.

But it's harder here; despite having a vestigial Senate, our system is basically unicameral. The party that can claim a majority in Parliament names the prime minister. There's a single locus of power, so you don't get three branches -- Senate, House and White House -- squabbling to dominate and eager for deep-pocketed allies.

You also don't get each one rewriting rules to push the limits of its influence, as via the gridlock-producing Hastert rule or the Senate's single-member hold. Here, it's a 50-per-cent majority, not 60. And there are always at least three parties represented in Parliament, so it's risky to just trample on the opposition. Bottom line: ignoring the wishes of three-quarters of the population gets you unelected sooner.

So what I appear to be saying is not only do you need to emulate single-payer health care, you need to switch to a Canadian-style parliamentary system, too. Sorry about that.

AA, I only partially agree with your normally astute analysis. By "whammy" I meant a serious illness. And if, by "whammy," we mean plans changing under our feet or our premiums going up, well, that's what we've had, or many people have had. It's just that we accepted it, like the weather, and we'd grumble accordingly or complain about how the drought ruined our crop and how would we ever recover.

When I was on the individual market for decades, I had regular increases in my premiums from the 1970s onwards. I clearly remember hopping around, joining this membership organization and that, trying to get a better deal. And every better deal only ever went up in their premiums after I joined. Like clockwork. I "accepted" this because what else was I going to do? Go without insurance? Go without, and you never got back in. Going uninsured even for days was fatal. You were out, and there was no appeal; underwriting had an unlisted number. And there were only two companies.

Who ever really gets to test a plan before they buy it? Like with a car, say? Including the one they have now? Even an HSA. How did we know upfront THAT was going to work? Every time I signed up (and I sold insurance), I looked at the specs, made a guess as to my needs, tried to keep my premiums and co-pays down, looked at the extras, and signed. What else? And that's what we have now, only "better." I mean we are still talking about the same insurance companies writing plans they understand, which is all they ever did and all we ever bought, I'd submit.

Who knew if $2 million of major-medical was ever going to be "enough" or "right"? Even if you could evaluate the hopelessly vague and general language used to describe all the MM stuff they covered, you had no idea what sort of illnesses and maladies you were going to suffer or the treatments you'd need? You had no idea.

If anything, we're closer to the ideal of testing driving policies now because it will be easier to change and upgrade your policy if you don't like your former one. It will also be easier to understand what it is you're buying because the explanations are at least supposed to be clearer and the comparisons easier to make.

But in the old days, if you got cancer under Plan A, and Plan A pooped out or threw you off the plan, you couldn't toddle over to the dealership and ask to test drive the new year's model. You were SOL. Perhaps dependent upon the beneficence of tax payers' funding Medicaid.

I agree that calling people whiners is unproductive and not nice. But don't, then, the "whiners" have some duty to address the former inequities and suggest a way forward? Even if that way means making a fix here or there to the ACA? Studying the MA model might be a good way to start. Understanding also that the 50 states were each meant to have their own exchanges and not dump the whole burden onto the HC.gov would also be good.

Politically, we'd be a whole lot better off if one party (or industry) wasn't dead set against ANYTHING improving. That's the bottom line. Oh yes, they blather on about cross-border competition among insurance companies (read Klein on that non starter). Or tort reform. But the fact is, ObamaCare was THEIR idea, an idea they adopted ONLY, as far as I can tell, in order to STOP HillaryCare. It could have been DoleCare or HeritageCare if they had actually supported it. And now they are trying their darndest to scuttle ObamaCare with "something else" they'll also oppose as soon as some Democrat comes out in favor of it.

This cycle has to stop, and Obama, IMO, deserves enormous credit for insisting on changing up the music, good, bad and ugly, and expending huge political capital on it.