I used to be HIGHLY skeptical of the HCR. Then this happened. And now I support it 100%

[Occulus]

58. It will be at the least four years before the question is seriously raised.

All of the provisions of the ACA that are not yet in effect kick in in 2014. Nobody in Washington, and I do mean nobody at all, will even entertain serious inquiries as to improvements to the ACA until all of its provisions are enacted.

From that point, Obama will, assuming he is reelected, have two years left in his term. No Democrat, in either the House or the Senate, will approach modifying or "improving" the ACA with a fifty mile pole without Obama's personal blessing. He almost certainly will want the ACA tested "as is"; the ACA, after all, is his personal legacy.

Given that, assuming we get another Democrat in the White House after Obama (an event that hasn't happened in my lifetime), it isn't terribly likely that person will be willing to tamper with a law that has only just taken effect, and is his predecessor's legacy, to boot.

Let me amend my subject line. It will take at least six years to get any improvements to the ACA to be seriously entertained, if those improvements are introduced at all. I have little confidence, or perhaps I mean none at all, that any such changes will be to the benefit of the People and not the industry from whom we are now mandated to purchase a product that we all generally agree is inefficient and substandard.

Single payer and Medicare for all are dead issues for the foreseeable future. It will be a matter of years, at the very least, before the ACA is modified toward either of those goals in any meaningful way.

To claim otherwise is simply naive.