Health whatever reform

Congress can defund it at anytime between now and 2014 (and probably will) but yes, if your employer doesn't provide health insurance, the plan is you can go to the "insurance exchange" (in fact you'll be legally required to) and if you qualify, use the income-scaled premium subsidies to buy insurance.

In one of their patented 11 dimension chess moves, the Obama Administration made the employer penalty for not offering (or dropping existing) health coverage a fraction of the actual cost of insurance. So the 30% drop rate is probably low. Unless its required by a collective bargaining agreement, I think most employers are going to jump at the chance to pay a small penalty to capture the savings from eliminating its health insurance costs (no doubt blaming Obamacare in the companywide email).

OK here's what really sucks about that... one element that was pretty cool about the otherwise crummy Wyden-Bennett HCR bill (which would have kicked everyone to a subsidized insurance exchange) was that employers were required to rebate to its workers whatever money they would have spent on health insurance for at least the first two years. Just like he forgot to include price controls on the premiums taxpayers will be subsidizing, Obama forgot to include an employer premium rebate in his healthcare bill, so approximately 0% of employer savings from dropping health coverage will pass through to employees. Funny that the Washington Generals didn't see that one coming.