Democrats passed the Obamacare legislation so we could find out what is in the new law. It's 2000 pages long, and refers a lot to previous laws and regulations, so they couldn't explain it, didn't have time. Of course part of the reason they couldn't explain it was because a lot of it was going to made up by unelected bureaucrats as they go along. The law was said to be intended to improve healthcare in the US, as well as "bending the cost curve" down. It is difficult to understand how that will work for some provisions of the law. For example. the law puts a tax on medical devices. I am uncertain as to what devices this covers, but apparently it would include things like artificial knees and hips, and pacemakers and stents used to treat heart disease. The tax will increase the cost of these devices, which would appear to mitigate against the goal of reducing the cost of healthcare. Another effect could be a reduction in the use of these devices; this would seem to mitigate against improved healthcare. During debate Obama suggested that old people were getting too much medical care, and that they should just take an aspirin and die. This is obviously the actual intent of the bill, raise the price so people will stop using them. It would have been simpler to just invoke "death panels" to decide who gets care, but Sarah Palin ruined that simple approach and forced Obama to set up a more circuitous path to achieve his objective of spending less money on healthcare of old people.