My friends mom gets health insurance now for the first time in almost eight years. She has cancer. They can't turn her down now because she has cancer.
I'm happy.
Is it perfect? Nope. Won't be until we start using it and finding out the flaws.
PW, you probably qualify for a subsidy. I do. My co-worker and I looked the plans up because he's very very liberal and often gets into arguments with his conservative friends, and a friend said "it's going to cost me two to three times as much now!" and he didn't believe it. I had just shopped for insurance on my own in September of 2012 so I said "Let's find out exactly how much it is for me and we'll see."
It WAS just over twice as much - but the plans now cover a lot more than the plans then, and the webpage told me I qualified for a subsidy, but I didn't pursue finding out exactly how much since we were just looking for the general numbers. =P The place I work now signed me up to their new health insurance starting almost right after I got hired so I ended up not buying health insurance for myself nor do I need to do so now... so it might NOT actually have cost me just over twice as much... I dunno.
January 1st of 2013 was a great day. I woke up and had health insurance again after not having it for three months. It was a relief.