On March 23, 2010, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama. Despite multiple legal challenges regarding its constitutionality, the PPACA - also known as “Obamacare” - remains in effect today.

Within a month of its signing, Medicare and Medicaid were expanded to cover more of the 46 million uninsured Americans, including those who couldn’t buy coverage due to preexisting conditions. In September of 2010, young adults under the age of 26 were allowed back on their parent’s health insurance plan, extending coverage for one of the most uninsured groups of Americans. In that same month, annual and lifetime limits for care were banned. In 2011, funding was provided for new health care centers and payments for providers in rural areas. Seniors started to receive free preventive care and improved care after they left the hospital. In 2012, the contraceptive mandate went into effect, increasing access to care for millions of America women. You can see a full timeline of the ACA’s benefits here.

Has your life changed - positively or negatively - since the Affordable Care Act went into effect? We want to hear your stories!

How has your life been affected by the Affordable Care Act in the past three years?

Wendell Potter used to be the Vice President of Corporate Communications for health insurance giant Cigna. In his work, he had seen the lengths the company went to in order to save themselves money, but he quit his job after a crisis of conscience he had while attending a healthcare fair in his native Tennessee:

“I went there out of curiosity, and I saw something I never expected to see in the United States. I saw people — people I could’ve grown up with, they could have been my relatives — they were standing in long, long lines in the rain waiting to get care that was being provided by doctors who were volunteering their time, and they were treating people in barns and animal stalls. Just witnessing that scene was jolting for me.”

Hal Sparks and Jacki Schechner discussed healthcare legislation with Potter this morning on “Talking Liberally.” Potter talks about what led him to testify before Congress against the health insurance industry. He says we are “definitely on the right track” with healthcare reform, but he’s not surprised at the roadblocks because the industry is heavily invested in influencing public opinion as well as lobbying, and “they own a bunch of lawmakers.”

Cenk Uygur, Jacki Schechner, and a Tea Party group leader from Florida agree: yes, yes he is.

The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion is meant to provide increased health care coverage for low-income Americans. But some states are refusing to accept the expansion, and poor residents could find themselves stuck in the gap between Medicaid and subsidized coverage.

The Medicaid expansion will take effect in 2014 and will allow adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line to receive Medicaid. Originally, states who refused to comply with the expansion would lose all Medicaid funding, but when the Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act, it found such a sanction unconstitutional, striking down that portion of the law and making the Medicaid expansion a voluntary effort.

A number of states, all with Republican governors, have refused to participate in the Medicaid expansion. The states are Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.

The cost of expanding Medicaid coverage has been given as a reason to opt out, but states who participate in the expansion beginning in 2014 will get three years of full federal funding for new Medicaid recipients accepted under the expanded guidelines.

Individual states set guidelines for Medicaid programs, so income limits vary – but they are lower than the proposed expansion. In most states, non-disabled, childless adults are left without coverage, which would also change under the expansion.

For low-income individuals living in any of the states that are refusing to accept the expanded money for Medicaid, the news doesn’t look good. Those making between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level will be eligible to receive tax credits to help cover the costs of obtaining individual insurance.

But those living under the federal poverty line, yet still ineligible for Medicaid, will receive no help for insurance. The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that those living in states who don’t participate in the Medicaid expansion, but who would otherwise wise be eligible for Medicaid, will be exempt from the individual mandate.

But while low-income, uninsured individuals may not be punished, they will still be uninsured, meaning more than 11 million adults could be left in the gap between Medicaid and tax credits if Republican governors continue to refuse to participate in the Medicaid expansion.

Fast food chains like Wendy’s are cutting worker’s hours, citing the burden of insuring them under the ACA. But the Affordable Care Act provision about insuring full-time workers doesn’t even start until 2014. There’s only one reason a company that made $12 billion in profits last year (that’d be Wendy’s) would cut hours for employees: greed. It’s nothing new, and it has nothing to do with Obamacare.

“It’s total baloney,” says Current correspondent Jack Schechner. Watch the full video @ link.

What will the Affordable Care Act look like on a state level once enacted? Mother Jones reporter Andy Kroll joins The War Room with Jennifer Granholm to discuss the Friday deadline for states to implement the ACA. Watch the full interview here.

36 million people with preexisting conditions could be denied insurance if Obamacare is repealed.

Obamacare is a Tax Cut for the Middle Class (via Center for American Progress)

Mitt can’t seem to decide if “Obamacare” is a penalty or a tax…much like he can’t discern a difference between the health care he enacted in Massachusetts and Obama’s universal health care plan.

The Romney campaign has raised $4.2 million through the Internet since yesterday’s health care ruling…with a lot of angry conservatives across the U.S. this morning, we couldn’t help ourselves!