Looks like Obamacare is more “on track” than “train wreck.”

In a striking illustration of the promise that the health law holds for consumers, two Oregon private insurers vying to sell coverage on the state’s Obamacare insurance marketplace this October are reevaluating their opening bids for the plans’ monthly premiums. The reason? A side-by-side regional comparison of all proposed 2014 premiums for Oregon marketplace plans became public on Oregon’s marketplace website Thursday, and showed that the two insurers’ planned monthly premiums were far higher than other proposals. That raised fears among the companies’ officials that their plans wouldn’t be competitive on the market later this year, leading them to proactively request a rate reduction — and as more of Obamacare is implemented, state insurance commissioners expect that trend to continue:

“Posting rate comparisons company-by-company is a taste of what is to come,” says Cheryl Martinis of the Oregon Insurance Division.

Judging by the reaction, there’s already an impact.

Providence Health Plan on Wednesday asked to lower its requested rates by 15 percent. Gary Walker, a Providence spokesman, says the “primary driver” was a realization that the plan’s cost projections were incorrect. But he conceded a desire to be competitive was part of it.

A Family Care Health Plans official on Thursday said the insurer will ask the state for even greater decrease in requested rates. CEO Jeff Heatherington says the company realized its analysts were too pessimistic after seeing online that its proposed premiums were the highest.

“That was my question when I saw the rates was, ‘Can we go in and refile these?’” he said. “We’re going to try to get these to a competitive range.”

Although some insurers have been using Obamacare as an excuse to hike premiums despite record profits, such rate hikes have been rarer — and less extreme — since the law’s passage. And to emphasize, this is all happening before the state has had a chance to review and approve initial plan rates — much less launch the actual marketplace. After the exchange opens up, consumers will have even more detailed information about marketplace plans, including the ability to compare — not just rates — but actual benefits offered on the plans side-by-side.

That’s particularly significant because much of the current variation in health plan premiums stems from rampant health care price opacity and wildly divergent benefits offered on different health plans — a status quo that won’t last in the Obamacare era since the law requires qualifying insurance plans to offer a base level of ten “essential health benefits,” including prescription drug, mental health, and maternity services. That means that Americans will be able to go online and figure out whether a plan costs more because it actually provides more robust benefits, or because an insurance company is just trying to gouge prices and maximize profits. Insurance offered on the marketplaces will be separated into Bronze, Silver, and Gold plans based on how generous their offered coverage is, making consumer comparisons between similar health plans simple.

As Thursday’s development shows, that public information empowers consumers by forcing insurers to compete with one another to attract customers. Or to put it another way — and contrary to conservative fear-mongering about the law — Obamacare is working exactly as it was intended to. And with 24 million Americans expected to gain coverage through the marketplaces by 2016, that’s great news for Americans’ pocketbooks — as well as their health.

Colorado is bringing health care reform to a TV ad near you.

With over 40 percent of Americans still unsure whether or not Obamacare is even the law of the land, and an open enrollment period for its statewide insurance exchanges that begins in less than five months, Colorado is pumping $2 million into an outreach effort aimed at preparing consumers for upcoming changes under the health law. This makes Colorado the first state to mount an aggressive push to raise awareness of one of Obamacare’s most important provisions for uninsured individuals and small businesses — although Oregon and Kentucky aren’t far behind with their own PR campaigns planned for next month.

Colorado is unveiling a state-run website to give residents more detailed information about Obamacare, and help them figure out whether they will qualify for federally subsidized individual or small business coverage once Colorado’s insurance marketplace opens up in October. For the next two months, the state will also run television spots and print, radio, and billboard ads highlighting the insurance marketplaces, where insurers must compete to offer Americans health coverage:

While the vast majority of Americans are already benefiting from Obamacare’s consumer protections and insurance reforms, enrolling the previously uninsured into health plans on the state-level marketplaces will be critical for successful implementation of the law, and integral to reducing America’s uninsurance rate while improving public health. Some 24 million Americans are expected to receive insurance through the marketplaces by 2016.

But not everybody agrees that now is the proper time to begin the outreach efforts. Some federal officials worry that such education campaigns may be premature, and end up confusing consumers by advertising a product that doesn’t even exist yet. “Our research has shown if you go too early, you don’t have anything to offer, and people lose interest. It will be intense, but the timing is important,” Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner explained to the Washington Post.

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Ever since the Supreme Court gave Obamacare its constitutional blessing last summer, few Obamacare provisions have elicited as much ire from conservative critics and some in the business community as the requirement that large employers provide health coverage to all employees who work for 30 hours or more per week. Employers are now engaged in a concerted effort to force Congress to ease this worker protection, essentially presenting lawmakers with an ultimatum: loosen the relevant Obamacare rules, or we’ll continue to slash workers’ hours to avoid paying for their health coverage. In fact, this policy battle underscores the innate risks of America’s system of employer-sponsored health coverage.

First, it’s important to note that retail and service-sector employers such as Denny’s and Olive Garden — while making some of the biggest splashes about the Obamacare requirement — are not alone in their frustrations. Citing cost concerns, nonprofits such as charities and city and state governments have also joined the push to change the health law’s mandates for hourly waged workers (although the vast majority of large employers in general plan to keep providing health coverage after Obamacare implementation).

To be clear, these Americans will still be able to access insurance coverage under Obamacare regardless of their employers’ actions, either through Medicaid (if their state decides to participate in the reform law’s optional expansion) or by receiving federal subsidies to purchase insurance on Obamacare’s statewide exchanges. For instance, a part-time worker earning $15,000 per year would only have to pay $300 in annual premiums, with the remaining $2,718 covered by government tax credits. Still, reducing such part-time workers’ hours amounts to a pay cut for low-income Americans, giving employers formidable leverage in their dealings with Congress. And that very leverage — as well as employers’ generally outsized influence over their workers’ health care — is a direct consequence of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI).

American health care didn’t always work this way. In fact, a 2009 NPR foray into the history of ESI found that the modern system took root through a series of historical accidents and ad hoc responses to world events. At the turn of the 20th century, medical services were mostly cheap and procurable through cash or bartering — and the average American’s annual health costs were little more than $100 in today’s currency. But as innovation in health care technology began driving care prices up, individuals’ ability to pay for it began to dwindle, leading Americans to only consume care when they got sick while forgoing checkups and preventative services. The advent of medical insurance was born out of hospitals’ efforts to reverse this trend, as Baylor University Hospital began providing Dallas-area teachers with a monthly premium-driven insurance plan that would come to be called “BlueCross.” While this was limited to teachers at the time, the idea caught on — and by the time World War II came around, employers began offering benefits like health coverage as a way to lure workers during an era of sky high demand for good labor.

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As Obama administration officials work toward fully implementing the health care reform law, and prepare to begin enrolling Americans in the new state-level insurance marketplaces by 2014, Obamacare’s critics have decried the effort as nothing short of a disaster. Republican opponents of health reform have long complained that the legislation is too lengthy and complicated, business owners are too confused about what it means for them, and Americans won’t be able to figure out how to navigate their future insurance plans in the statewide markets. And earlier this month, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D–MT) suggested that the health law is so complicated that its implementation could be a “huge train wreck” going forward.

But, as President Obama pointed out during a press conference on Tuesday morning, most of those concerns are overblown — largely because a “huge chunk” of the health law has already been implemented. Obamacare isn’t threatening to create a huge headache for most of the country because it’s actually already in effect for all of the Americans who currently have health insurance. The president explained that from this point forward, implementation efforts will solely be focused on the 10 to 15 percent of Americans who remain uninsured, which is a relatively small part of the population:

For the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they are already experiencing most of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act even if they don’t know it… And their only impact is that their insurance is stronger, better, more secure than it was before. Full stop. That’s it. They don’t have to worry about anything else.

The implementation issues come in for those who don’t have health insurance — maybe because they have a preexisting condition and the only way they can get health insurance is to go out on the individual market, and they are paying 50 percent or 100 percent more than those of us who are lucky enough to have group plans. Or people who are too poor to get health insurance and their employers don’t offer it. Maybe they work for a small business and the small business can’t afford right now to provide health insurance. So, all the implementation issues that are coming up are implementation issues related to that small group of people: 10 to 15 percent of Americans. Now, it’s still 30 million Americans, but a relatively narrow group who don’t have health insurance right now.

Obama’s statements come on the heels of an announcement that the administration has simplified the application that Americans will use to apply for coverage in the health law’s state exchanges. After Obama administration officials published a first draft of the 21-page application, it was met with complaints that it would be too difficult to fill out. The Department of Health and Human Services addressed those concerns by revising the document and releasing a final version on Tuesday that’s much shorter, simpler, and easier to navigate.

Of course, overhauling the nation’s health care system does involve a lot of work — especially since Republican lawmakers have refused to cooperate with Obamacare over the past several years. Because many GOP leaders have avoided laying any groundwork on the state level, much of the law’s implementation has been left to the federal government. Federal officials are certainly working hard to prepare for the state-wide insurance markets’ open enrollment period, which is set to begin in October. Just as in the case of the new application, they may continue to make tweaks to streamline the process — but that doesn’t necessarily mean Obamacare’s implementation is a total disaster that will wreak havoc on the majority of Americans’ health coverage.

Arkansas came one step closer to expanding Medicaid under Obamacare on Thursday after the state senate advanced a modified expansion bill by a 27-8 vote. The bill now heads to Gov. Mike Beebe (D), who is expected to sign it promptly.

In March, Beebe and the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) struck a first-of-its-kind deal that would allow Arkansas to expand Medicaid while also privatizing the state-federal partnership program. Under the tentative deal, the federal government will subsidize the entire cost of Arkansas’ Medicaid expansion, but allow the state to use that federal money to buy poor people private insurance, rather than expand the existing public program. The compromise — which has been dubbed “the private option” — was appealing to both Beebe and the Obama Administration, since conservative Arkansas legislators are skeptical of public entitlements, but the state has a high number of poor and uninsured residents who will benefit from expanded access to health coverage.

The development is particularly significant since the private option could serve as a template for Republican-controlled states. Conservatives who are adamantly opposed to public health entitlements like Medicaid are being fiercely lobbied by hospital associations and advocates for the poor, who are warning them that safety net hospitals and state budgets could buckle under the weight of uncompensated medical care costs barring expanded insurance access for the poor. The private option could allow Republicans to heed those warnings without endorsing a program they have historically slammed.

Now that Arkansas has all but approved the deal, all eyes will be on Republican state leaders like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. Both are strong Obamacare critics and have rejected expanding Medicaid — despite their past endorsement of putting more people into the program while privatizing it. Considering those states’ massive uninsurance and poverty rates, the potential presidential contenders might feel a little more pressure to accept an Arkansas-style deal as it moves closer to becoming a reality.

Regal Entertainment Group, the mammoth corporation that operates thousands of movie screens across the country, recently announced that it plans to cut part-time workers’ hours to avoid giving them basic health coverage under Obamacare — despite the company’s soaring stock and six-figure pay raises for major executives. As it turns out, Regal customers are none too pleased with that decision, and they’re taking their outrage to the company’s Facebook page. Here are some of the things that (former) Regal theater enthusiasts are telling the company:

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Several major companies in the fast food and service industries have dug in their heels against Obamacare, deciding that they would rather protect their bottom lines than provide their employees basic health benefits. On Monday, Regal Entertainment Group — which operates Regal Cinemas, Edwards Theaters, and United Artists screens in 38 states — joined the war on health reform, announcing it will cut back non-salaried workers’ shifts to 30 hours per week in order to avoid giving them basic coverage.

The theater chain claims that it is simply trying to “manage [its] budget…in accordance with business needs.” But that assertion rings hollow considering Regal’s soaring profits and lavish executive compensation. In 2012, Regal’s stock went up by over 20 percent, and every single major company executive, including the CEO, CFO, and COO, received a six-figure pay increase. CEO Amy Miles made off particularly well, with her pay rising by 31 percent to $4.45 million for the year, bolstered by a base salary increase of $750,000.

Regal is in the minority. Multiple surveys have shown that approximately 94 percent of the nation’s large employers will either definitely or most likely provide workers’ health benefits under Obamacare, since they fear that not doing so will invite public backlash and could potentially drive away current and prospective employees to companies that treat their workers better. As an executive of Aon Hewitt’s U.S. health and benefits department put it, employers’ incentive to stop sponsoring health insurance “is strong until you look at the numbers. Between the [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] penalties for failing to offer coverage and the ensuing talent flight risk, most employers believe they need to continue to play a role in employee health.”

Still, as Regal’s decision demonstrates, not all companies are thinking quite that strategically. But this type of anti-labor practice is nothing new, and it extends far beyond Obamacare. Large companies — and particularly those in the service sector — have a long history of protecting profits by cutting hours, firing workers, slashing benefits, and generally shifting costs onto their employees. Obamacare just offers these corporations a convenient scapegoat.

The Los Angeles Times reports that several large health insurers plan to take advantage of an Obamacare loophole that allows them to renew individual policyholders’ current health plans for up to a year without having to conform to Obamacare’s consumer protections and market reforms. That move would lead to uneven implementation of the landmark reform law in its nascent stages, and could drive up prices for other Americans purchasing insurance through the 2014 Obamacare marketplaces.

Insurers offering their customers the option to renew their current coverage could wind up not having to fully comply with Obamacare until well into 2014, depending on the month that the plan was issued. This gives insurers an extension on implementing important reforms to their plans, such as Obamacare’s ban on annual and lifetime benefit caps. While that could be advantageous for certain individual policyholders — mostly the healthier population — reform advocates fear that it will inevitably lead to cherry-picking that shifts costs onto the broader pool of Americans:

Some policy experts are expressing concern about this practice for fear that insurers will focus on renewing younger and healthier policyholders and hold them out of the broader insurance pool next year. Their absence could leave a sicker and older population in new government insurance exchanges, driving up medical costs and premiums there.

“This could undermine the Affordable Care Act, and it opens the door for exacerbating potential rate shock in the exchanges,” said Christine Monahan, a senior analyst at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. “The health insurers can cherry-pick some healthy people and it raises prices for everyone else.” [...]

If an insurer offers this option, it would then be up to consumers to decide whether they want to renew an existing policy into 2014. The length of any renewal may depend on what month their annual plan year begins. [...]

Renewing an older policy could mean forgoing some of those richer benefits and new limits on out-of-pocket medical expenses.

So far, large insurers are split on whether or not they will take advantage of this loophole. UnitedHealth Group hedged on their intentions to the Times; WellPoint — which runs Blue Cross plans in many states — said that its approach would differ from state-to-state; Kaiser Permanente was the only large provider to explicitly state that it would not renew existing plans beyond January 1, 2014.

Insurers choosing to take advantage of the loophole are simply delaying the inevitable, and will cause significant damage to sicker or poorer Americans without individual policies in the process. That’s why certain states, including California and Oregon, are considering taking legislative action to prevent or substantially limit such dodges by health insurers. As Oregon Insurance Commissioner Louis Savage — whose office issued a rule in the state barring any extension beyond March 31, 2014 — told the Times, “We want to get as many people as possible into the exchange. I think having renewals go deep into 2014 is counterproductive to the goals of the federal healthcare law.”

Saturday marks the three year anniversary of President Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping overhaul of the U.S. health care system since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. While some the law’s most significant provisions won’t go into full effect until next year, many of its important reforms have already taken hold — and have already changed the lives of real Americans for the better. Here are just a few ways that the Affordable Care Act has bolstered the health and financial security of Americans from all around the country:

1. Diabetic Arthur from California finally has health coverage after being uninsured for five years.

Refusing coverage and treatments for sick Americans due to their “pre-existing medical conditions” has always ranked among the insurance industry’s most reviled practices. For decades, Americans have recounted horror stories about battling insurance companies while loved ones suffered — like 4-month-old Alex Lange, who was turned away by an insurer for being born “obese.” Thanks to Obamacare, that’s no longer legal, as the consumer protection for Americans with pre-existing conditions has already gone into effect for children. It won’t be extended to all Americans until 2014 — but that doesn’t mean Obamacare hasn’t already changed the lives of adults with pre-existing conditions, too.

Through its state-based transitional Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) — a bridge program for American adults with pre-existing conditions that will cover them until the law is fully implemented — Americans like 56-year-old Arthur Yu have already been gaining coverage that was once unavailable to them. After losing his job in 2008 and running through his COBRA benefits, Yu remained uninsured for a full five years due to his diabetes and high cholesterol. “If something major happened to me, my savings would get wiped out,” he said. But after Obamacare’s passage, he was able to enroll in California’s PCIP program in 2012, giving him enormous financial — and medical — peace of mind.

2. Connie from Arizona got a $79 rebate from her insurance company in the mail.

On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that Obamacare has helped seniors save over $6 billion on their prescription drug costs by closing the so-called Medicare “donut hole” — and that’s not the only way that the law is already saving Americans money.

Because of Obamacare’s “80/20 rule” requiring insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge customers on actual medical care rather than overhead or profits, millions of Americans have received rebate checks — totaling $1.5 billion in 2011 alone — from their insurance companies in the mail. Arizona resident Connie Kadansky spoke to CNN about her personal experience with this measure after getting a $79 rebate from her insurer last summer, saying, “It was a surprise. My insurance agent tells me that my insurance is going to skyrocket. He hates Obamacare. I read the letter and I said to myself, ‘So what’s wrong with this? This is good.’”

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Thursday marks the three-year anniversary of Congress’ passage of the health care reform law. And although Obamacare has had a high profile throughout the past several years of political fights over health reform, that hasn’t ensured that Americans understand what the law actually does. Even after three years, many Americans are still confused about Obamacare’s specific provisions, and can’t correctly identify what is and isn’t in the health law.

According to a new Kaiser Health tracking poll, a plurality of Americans incorrectly believe the health law cuts Medicare benefits, establishes “death panels,” gives health benefits to undocumented immigrants, and contains a public option. The idea that Obamacare includes a public option is the biggest misconception about it, as 57 percent of respondents asserted that they believed the law has a public health insurance option — compared with just 28 percent who know it doesn’t:

In general, Americans are less likely to be aware that widely popular policies are included in Obamacare, like the provisions that provide tax credits for small businesses and that help make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. On the other hand, the public is much more likely to be able to attribute the less popular aspects of the law — like the individual mandate that compels every American to purchase insurance — to Obamacare:

The discrepancies are likely because of the ongoing, politicized misinformation campaign that’s been waged against Obamacare. Previous polling has shown that accurate knowledge about the health law tends to be divided along party lines: Democrats know more about what the law actually does than Independents do, and Independents know more than Republicans do. That’s been an issue for the health reform law since its inception. Before the Supreme Court handed down its decision to uphold the law, a slim majority of Americans said they opposed Obamacare as a whole — but when they were asked about its provisions separately, most of the law’s actual policies had broad support.

The tide is beginning to turn. Whereas Obamacare used to be solely associated with the negative fearmongering surrounding it, Democrats are now beginning to tout the health reform law’s accomplishments more confidently, hoping to raise awareness about its more popular provisions. Health care reform proponents are looking ahead to 2014 and beyond, when more Americans will start feeling the positive effects of Obamacare on their own lives. But there’s still a long way to go when it comes to educating the American people about the law.