Originally Posted by ElVee

For something as large as the ACA, you're going to have to sit down and do some serious reading. Google up various "good bad ACA" "pros and cons ACA" and so on, and branch out from there. Even things like "romneycare vs obamacare" will give you some perspective. Read the conservative sources and the liberal ones. Avoid mass media outlets and television. You simply can't be fully informed there. Consumer Reports probably does a good job distilling it, but I can't say firsthand. You may even want to contrast and compare against the health care positions of other countries at roughly our level of affluence (france, canada, scandanavian countries, britain, japan, etc).

This topic is a charged one, and as such you're not always going to get easy or unbiased answers that you're going to accept:

- This deals with how people feel about the ownership of their own money. This is a hugely charged topic. It eventually leads into social welfare and taxation and so on. The whole, "I'm not paying for someone else's ____."

- This deals with the gulf between "haves" and "have-nots" and both sides are quite passionate.

- This deals with empathy or lack thereof. I value opinions on the subject from people who've lived without health care, been screwed by health care, or otherwise certainly have a beef with it....AND STILL fall on the unexpected side of the debate. Someone who's against this and has never been in trouble has a hard time relating, and I have a hard time getting past their clear bias. Talk with your doctor, or friends in the health care/insurance industry. Talk with people in similar roles in other countries and how their health care works, and ask them what they think of ours.

- The purpose/role of government in our lives and welfare. We consume so much from our government and we want it free. Or we want no involvement from government (except what benefits me). And so on. You run the gamut from completely self-sufficient fortress types to selfless persons who'd give everything for fellow men.


Lastly, you can form your own opinion, but unless you're looking to *do* something about it, I'd usually ask people to just quietly have their opinion. Shouting about it (crying, whining, anger, etc) in the vacuum of the Internet or wailing about it to the choir of your own peers does nothing but swirl around bad karma in a soul-sucking whirlpool of passionate opinions. You'd serve yourself (and your health) better by going outside and enjoying a walk or doing something productive.

I fall into the lower half of people on the patriotic scale (if not lower quarter), but yet I have to admit, regardless of the talking points of today/tomorrow/yesterday, we live in an excellent nation which affords probably all of us on this forum a very good life. However the politics ends and moves forward, that won't change.