Death might be feeling a little bummed out, but insurance companies must be rejoicing. They've just been guaranteed a shitload of new customers. One of the more amusing aspects of the entire "Obamacare" kerfuffle has been the way the tinfoil hat types (including the pundits on Faux News) have bloviated about the insurance mandate as being a government program and rampant socialism when it is the opposite -- it's a huge giveaway to private insurance companies. For me, one of life's little mysteries has been the way the Repugnicans as a party allowed their distaste for President Obama to overrule their usual love for anything that's good for big business and corporate interests -- and the Affordable Care Act certainly qualifies as something the corporatists should have loved.

Personally, I would have loved to have seen the ACA nullified so that maybe, just maybe, it would have been possible to get a single payer system in this country in my lifetime, but it looks like we're SOL on that fantasy for awhile.