Off the point, yet not entirely separate, is the money required to administer the Affordable Care Act. It must be borrowed. In the coming days President Obama will seek to have Congress raise the debt ceiling. The Decatur Daily will side with the President and advocate for increasing our unfathomable debt. The editorial will read like Democrat Party talking points and the theme will advance some type of "abhorrent, but, urgent and necessary" political narrative. Those who desire to read Sunday's news on Saturday may return to the comment section tomorrow.

Otis you are so good at critiscism. What's your solution to affordable health care? Give us some specifics.

Monopoly.

There is no true competition in the U.S. for healthcare. In fact, shopping for healthcare across state lines is prohibited by Federal Law. Changing this would be a good place to start.

Joe, its YOUR responsiblity not ours to figure out how YOU can get affordable healthcare. I have an idea, get a better job so you can afford it. Its a crazy concept, I know...

To me this editorial makes absolutely no sense what so ever. Are you blaming Bentley for Alabama's monopoly situation? President Obama has known specifically about Alabama's problem since the summer of 2009. Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs ( an Alabama native), said " In an insurance market where 30 million or 40 million or 46 million new participants or consumers could come into the marketplace, in a marketplace that's potentially dominated by, in some regions or areas of the country, one insurer dominating the market -- my home state of Alabama, BlueCross/BlueShield has roughly 89 percent of the private health insurance market, okay? We all understand that in a monopoly, where one side dominates the entire market, it's going to be hard to keep down costs, right? If you had one place to eat lunch before you came to the briefing, do you think it would be cheap?" in a press conference on Aug 18th, 2009. Health insurance monopolies will only be changed if interstate commerce is changed i.e. a federal problem and not a state problem. If anyone is to blame then blame Obama not Bentley.

And how does an exchange improve competition? First exchanges will only be available to those in small businesses or individuals without access to company policies. The insurance though the exchange will be to each state's available health insurers. So if an exchange is set up tomorrow the problem of the monopoly in Alabama does not change at all. The only way this will change is for the federal government to change the interstate commerce rules for health insurers OR Alabama set up a compact with another state. Neither of those options seem likely. In fact according to HHS website compacts cannot be enacted until after 2016. Second the exchanges will do absolutely nothing to change our monopoly situation for those who have insurance through a large cooperation.

I think the exchange idea is a good one and should have been done long ago with or without the Affordable Care Act. But the editorial's correlation between exchanges and monopolies is at best a reach and at worst completely unfounded.