Nice profession. I'm sure you don't worry too much about her future security.
One of my biggest concerns with turning health insurance over to the govt is that it will lead to greater authority over the average citizen's life. My observation is that govt service attracts personalities who tend to think they know best and want to exert control over others.
Example (maybe not the best, but one that comes to mind): Of course you remember that the interstate highway system speed limit was originally 70 mph. The Feds. were successfully lobbied by interests that were concerned about the death toll on those highways and that they attributed to excessive speed. The Feds. decided that 55 mph would be a safer speed limit and pressed the states to enact it. This is a ploy of the Federal govt: To claim that they don't decide everything for the States and that State govts have the authority to enact their own laws. But wait -- the Feds. then told states that they would withhold highway repair funds (taxes actually paid by the citizens of those states) from those states that failed to enact the new speed limit (I remember this because Ohio was one of the states slow to change). Of course, with that much money at stake, the states kowtowed. So, the Feds. could claim that they don't dictate everything to the States when in fact anything they want to see changed gets changed (Reference the recent gutting of the law passed in Arizona that sought to deal with an out-of-control illegal immigration problem . . hey, the Supreme Court is part of the Federal govt too).
So, if we enact this "Obamacare", you don't think this opens a Pandora's box of dictates from the Federal govt and its "experts" into every aspect of an individual's life that has (or could have) a bearing upon that individual's health and health care costs? If the govt (taxpayers actually) is paying for one's health coverage, wouldn't they say, "We need to control costs, so you must do this and cannot do that". In other words, "you wanted the coverage, so we are going to control you and control costs." This is already being done in many ways. The govt is absolutely rabid now against smoking. In New York, they legislated against trans fats in foods, and now are limiting the size of soft drinks one can buy. In Ohio, it is legal to purchase fireworks, but illegal to set them off in Ohio, so as to protect citizens' safety (What? It's Ok to blow your finger off so long as it's not in Ohio?)
As the govt. takes more and more control of health expenditures, you don't think they will move to control expenses by dictating indiviuals' lifestyle choices? I foresee not even having choices -- the Feds. will forbid companies to manufacture things with prohibited ingredients, or to prohibit manufacture of some items at all. Alcohol causes a lot of misery, disease and death. Though Prohibition did not work, wouldn't today's experts think they might know better how to do it? Say, limit the allowed alcohol percentage of beverages to such a low level that one could drink like a fish and likely die of something else before the alcohol can cause any damage (I think we call that "near-beer" now). How about limiting those evil sugars and sodium? It will probably be like so many other things -- the chemicals that replace sugars and sodium cause more damage, faster, than the natural ingedients.
You know I work with very disabled people, physically as well as mentally disabled. While we often do not know what caused these disabilities, a certain number of them have known or suspected causes. Genetics, for example. Some couples are just a bad genetic match, but that wasn't known until they started having disabled children. Geneticists claim that each person probably possesses 5 or 6 genetic defects that, if not countered by a healthy gene on our other chromosome, might produce some deleterious health effect or even cause our death. We are thus carriers of the defect but it is not expressed in our lives. But, if happenstance results in us mating with a person with that same defect, there is a chance that our offspring would inherit a defective genes from each parent and would be affected. The care for people I work with is lifelong and very expensive. If we needed to control health care expense, what better place to do it than to prevent individuals from being born who stand to inherit significant disabilities? (The issue becomes even stronger for maladies that are caused by inheriting just one copy of a gene, such as Huntington's Syndrome).
Do we then require people to be screened from genetic defects before they have children together? Do we prohibit individuals from partnering, no matter the emotional attachment, who we find would be a bad genetic match? For those people having genes that one copy causes devastating disease, perhaps not in evidence until they are adult and might have children, do we prohibit them from reproducing at all . . forced sterilzation to prevent that?
Granted, most people wouldn't be affected by such issues. The more likely scenario would be that govt prevents manufacture of certain products, requires health screenings and badgers individuals to improve their lifestyles. But in a land we call free, do we want govt, expert or not, dictating to us like this. Are we all children that need the govt to make our decisions for us?