Joe is always late. Always.

One day, he pays for it: he's running to catch the bus and breaks his leg. Being on time for class would have been nice, yes, but not spending a night in the hospital would have been even better.

A few days later, he's back at school with a killer cast. While you're signing it and asking him how the hospital was, he spurts out a "Thank God for Obamacare." Obamahuh? When you get home, your mom is fuming over some papers. When you ask her what's up, she tells you—using words you only understand a fraction of—that she has to pay a bunch of extra money. Why? A few expletives later, she drops the bomb: Obamacare. We repeat…Obamahuh?

What is Obamacare and why does everyone and their mother (literally) have an opinion about it?

The Facts

Obamacare is the nickname for a law passed by Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 called the Affordable Care Act. The basic gist? There are a bunch of new rules that health insurance companies and businesses (like your mom's) have to follow about health insurance.

Before you go any further, make sure you've read our quick bit on health insurance—it'll give you the low-down on what it is, how it works, and why people need it.

A while back, some people started fussing over some concerns they had about health insurance. Here are a few of the issues that came up:

• Health insurance is expensive (we're talking hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month), and some people just can't afford it.
• There tend to be arguments about what's covered and what's not, which means insurance companies won't pay for certain things they say aren't actually covered.
• Insurance companies could refuse to cover patients with "pre-existing conditions," i.e., previous medical issues that would indicate that they'd need a lot of medical care.

Obama's solution? The Affordable Care Act. This law does a few things:

• It guarantees that people with pre-existing health conditions can get health insurance.
• CHIP and Medicaid (medical insurance that covers people who can't afford other types of medical insurance) now cover a wider range of patients.
• Insurance companies can't charge women more than men for their health insurance. 
• All Americans are required to have a minimum amount of health care coverage. (Before, it was optional.)
• There are more options for how to obtain health insurance.

And…let the controversy begin.

Obamacare Supporters

Generally, people who support Obamacare like the idea that more things are covered and that insurance is more affordable for more people. If you were to ask a random Obamacare supporter why they were into it, here are a few answers you might get.

• "More people have medical insurance thanks to Obamacare; that means they can afford to pay when they need help, instead of being stuck with astronomically high bills that they can never pay off."
• "Since more people have medical coverage, fewer people are going to the emergency room because they have other options. That means the cost of medical care isn't going up as quickly."
• "Health insurance is now easily available for people who have been sick before, and health insurance companies can't get rid of customers because they get sick. It's not someone's fault that they have cancer."
• "People who couldn't afford health insurance in the past have more options now because Obamacare costs less for lower-income families."
• "Obamacare got rid of unfair and expensive health insurance policies that prevented people from getting help when they needed it."
• "It's now easier to find health insurance because Obamacare created an online marketplace where people can compare different insurance options."
• "Businesses with more than 50 employees have to provide health insurance, meaning that more people are protected with lower-cost work-provided health insurance."

Obamacare Detractors

On the other hand, people who aren't fans of Obamacare generally worry about how we'll pay for all the extra benefits. If you were to ask a random Obamacare detractor why they were against it, here are a few answers you might get.

• "Because insurance companies have to pay for more people, health insurance now costs more for everyone."
• "Younger, healthier people used to pay a lot less for health insurance because they were unlikely to need health care, but now some of them struggle to pay higher costs."
• "There are still people without health insurance."
• "Taxes have gone up to pay for the Obamacare system."
• "Over 4 million people lost their health insurance because their policies didn't meet the rules of Obamacare; those people all had to go looking for new health insurance. All that despite the fact that Obama promised that no one would lose their insurance."
• "Some people choose to smoke, drive dangerously, or eat too much. In the past, they might not have gotten health insurance, but now that they're guaranteed insurance, people who make healthy choices have to pay more so that people who make bad choices are covered."
• "Some people might not want health insurance, but now they're forced to have it."
• "Small businesses are discouraged from growing because they will have to pay more to offer health insurance to their employees."
• "Employers who now have to provide health insurance might go out of business because of the costs. If that happens, there will be fewer jobs."

And there you have it: the political controversy of the century so far.

What do you think?