Had a good friend of mine that has a decent job at a place that employs about 1000 people across the US tell me that they got the call from corporate last week. The company was paying for all their healthcare costs for them and their families. Not a bare bones plan, but a nice, good plan with low deductibles, etc. Company now says they have no choice but to stop paying for families because of the changes. If they continued to pay for the families under the new regulations, it would cause them to go out of business. The cost to cover a wife and 2 kids- $700 a month out of his pocket. So where his cost was zero before, it's now $8400 a year increase in his costs. If they don't do that and get it on the exchange, it's still a net increase, no matter what the cost will be. So it's not a matter of their plan was poor and it was being cancelled, it was a matter of the employer saying it was going to do grave financial harm to their company if they continued under the new requirements.

There are a lot of people there with families. Lots of blue collar workers making $40,000 a year. How someone making $40,000 a year can take a $8400 increase in costs is beyond me. Those people are losing some really good healthcare insurance. I honestly don't know what most of them are going to do. They can't afford $8,400 a year more. Most of them can't afford $1000 a year more. $8,400 a year isn't "we can eat out less" money, that's "we can't pay the mortgage" money.