National Underwriter has covered the healthcare transformation in this country intensively since before it was a glimmer in the Democrats' eye, through a long and intense political battle, through the many legal and legislative challenges the Republicans threw at it afterward, and to the present, through an uneven implementation period. And during all of that time, we have tried to remain objective about how we cover an issue of such massive importance to the country, and to our readers, whom the new law affected directly (and for the most part, negatively). We often were excoriated by readers for failing to excoriate the legislation itself, as if to say that failing to attack the law is by default, supporting it. That is not the kind of binary logic journalists adhere to (unless you're part of a cheerleading squad, like MSNBC or FOX News), but there you have it.

See also: Brokers work to bust myths on PPACA

What was interesting about the angry letters we received – and most were addressed to me personally – was that the letters usually had little to say about our actual coverage or the tone of it, and instead went into what the reader found most distasteful about Obamacare. A lot of these letters just hated how the law overturned their business. Fair enough…one of the things I found most worrisome about the law was how it decided that if anybody could afford to take a kidney punch over this, it was the insurance industry. And not just any part of the insurance industry, but its agents and brokers, the ones who were contributing the least to the sincerely messed-up state of health care delivery in this country. But I digress.