Up until 1980 Barry was in fact a name he commonly went by. It was also a nickname his father adopted in 1959 when first coming to the US so calls of racism is hardly accurate. Just like it's not racist to refer to G.W.B. as Dubya. For good or bad it's merely a nickname.

As for leadership, getting caught in the act and then taking half a year to react is hardly leadership, it's a PR response, nothing more.

The average wait from an Obama nomination to appointment is about 240 days, it was 277 under Bush (that was from Politifact). His appointment do spend more time on the floor for debate but much less time in committee. The big issue is he is 44% slower in even bothering to nominate anyone (compared to Clinton and Bush) which, when added to retirements and other planned/unplanned vacancies had led to a large increase in open appointment slots. That in turn is used to make the Senate approval process look completely out of whack with his recent predecessors, when in fact it's not all that unusual with the baseline set during Bush 2s time in office.

The best analysis is on judicial appointees, and as of his first term Obama had a 80.5% (173 out of 215) confirmation rate while Bush had a 77.4% rate (192 out of 248). Those numbers are from the Congressional Research Service.

The original 30+ million uninsured included Medicaid, Medicare and Chip eligible persons who were not enrolled, but still technically covered if anything happened. There were also a very large number of financially secure people who chose not to ensure. The actual number of involuntary uninsured was somewhere in the teens to low 20's (though some put that number even lower).

The predictions for the rate of uninsured, after the ACA, by the CBO itself, is almost identical, 30million plus.

The Medicare, Medicaid and Chip users should now be registered but the people who choose not to buy are still likely not to (the fine is unenforceable and a pittance compared to most yearly plan rates). But now you can add the relative poor, who even with subsidies cannot afford the increased plan prices.

There is also a new group, those who were insured but can now play the insurance lotto. Since they cannot be denied coverage when needed, if they're willing to pay out of pocket for the waiting period between enrollment and coverage, they can simply cancel their plans and wait to see if anything catastrophic happens, then enroll. And by catastrophic I mean cancer not broken bone (which can often cost less to pay cash for than going through insurance anyway). So this person can save thousands a year and if something unforeseeable happens, pay their medical expenses for a couple months until their new policy takes affect. If they put even half of their normal premiums into a savings account, in most cases this would be a financial win for them.

What free market exists when the government dictates by fiat what must be included in every product sold? Companies are free to add extra benefits (although that can lead to the gold-plated tax) but the base level has been raised for EVERYONE regardless of whether or not those benefits are of any use.

And how do you price your policy for males when you're not legally allowed to separate the sexes in your pricing policy? The same policy has to be available to both sexes. In fact, since more of the added benefits are geared towards women their new policies, while also going up relative to their old ones, are increasing significantly less than an equal aged mans.

The main difference in pricing comes from network, deductible and co-pay options, which directly impact out of pocket expenses.

So if you were paying $200 a month prior, now that everyone's been tossed in the same pool and additional benefits have been forced, you're either going to pay more (national average increase is 41% according to Forbes) or take drastic hits to available hospitals and a massive increase in deductibles and co-pays.

The majority of pre-ACA plans cannot be grandfathered according the the very tight restrictions placed on the grandfather clause. Almost any change, even including adjustments for inflation or age, automatically invalidate the plan and make it a violation of the ACA.

This was not an accident and is mentioned in discussion within the administration from the beginning.

That seems to fit this situation to a tee.

Trenkle refused to sign off on the security of the website so they were over his head and got his boss to say everything was fine, regardless of reports showing there are still several major holes.

News reports are now saying he refused to sign off on the websites security.

When he wouldn't sign off on the website they went over his head to get a temporary security authorization from his boss, who, despite several warnings about holes throughout the system, didn't seem to have an issue signing off.

So as it turns out he may have been the only competent person there.

So if a 34 year old single male's plan doesn't currently cover maternity costs and birth control pills but covers everything else with a good network, low deductibles and manageable co-pays he be say thank you for a bill that now covers his birth control pills but will have much more restrictive networks, higher deductibles and higher co-pays because... well .... just because.

There are millions of plans that work quite well and are very comprehensive that do not meet the random requirements of the ACA. The Lead to Aluminum fallacy is just what people like you try to sell yourselves.

Nothing in the ACA controls health care costs, in fact it almost universally pushes up costs. The average rate increase due to implementation of ACA regulations according to Forbes is 41%.

It also does very little to actually increase the number of insured. Even their own numbers expect very similar rates of pre-ACA and post-ACA insured since most of those counted as uninsured pre-ACA were in fact eligible for government healthcare anyway and just weren't officially registered but who would have been as soon as they visited any medical office.

They also didn't bother to figure out who was going to subsidize the ACA like the Federal Government actually subsidize Romneycare.

It seems like very few congresscritters can do math and in this case, none of those few that can had anything to do with the ACA.

They did, but as they could not legally force individual states to pay for those exchanges the Supreme Court said it was in fact optional.

As for the "Every state that has it's own exchange has been fine" line, that's patently untrue. Many states are experiencing the same problems as the federal site, some because they have to hit the Federal site to get information, and for some that are not, that is because they are primarily handling Medicare enrollment and not actual insurance.

Then there are actual technical problems like Hawaii, which was delayed by 2 weeks and I believe is still refusing to report any numbers from their site, and Oregon, where the Governor has told people to just mail in their applications.

Obama has a higher percentage of appointments pass confirmation then Bush did. He has however, attempted to make fewer appointments than either Bush or Clinton which leave a lot of voluntary vacancies.

The shutdown happened the same day as the launch so had no impact on the website at all. Also the shutdown came down to a single bill, that was held up by senate DEMOCRATS that would have fully funded the government, including further aspects of the ACA, if only the individual mandate was pushed back for 1 year (there were previous proposals by the House prior to the shutdown but that was the final one that was offered that the Dems refused to even allow for a vote).

If you haven't been paying attention, that's the same proposal now coming from several Democrats.

A couple problems with that line of thought. First the penalties, even at full swing, are significantly less than many of the plans people can apply for. Second, because of the way the ACA was written their is no real enforcement process for people who skip buying insurance. The IRS can withhold your tax return for payment but not much else. So if your taxes balance they will not get 1 cent from you.

And because of the way it is all set up it would still be cheaper for a lot of people to pay for the standard medical issues out of pocket (ER, broken bones, checkups, etc) and only apply if something catastrophic happens (cancer). Sure there will be a small waiting period where they will be responsible for the initial care costs after the catastrophic diagnosis, but since the odds are in their favor, that could still save them thousands in the long run.

Sadly, you're one of the lucky ones. The average increase to premiums, according to Forbes, is 41%. The only states with reductions are ones where the state government already had set extremely tight controls over their health care markets so the ACA actually adds fewer burdens on their systems.