I teach health policy. Pity me.  I have traveled the length and breadth of the purple state of Wisconsin attempting to explain to skeptical, and sometimes hostile, audiences what the Affordable Care Act actually entails.  I've been yelled at on National Public Radio, which is odd, but not the worst thing to ever happen to a person.  In a purple state, the questions come from every possible corner of the political maze.  "Why doesn't the ACA pay for acupuncture?"  Gee.  We're just trying to get it to pay for cancer treatment, or I don't know, well child visits.  

Or, "Why should I pay for those freeloaders to have heath care?" Um.  You already are.  That's the point.  Or, after I run out the statistics on how little bang we get for our buck compared to other industrialized countries, I hear that I am biased or unpatriotic - you know, in that nice, Wisconsin way. "How can you say we have bad healthcare?  My doctor is the best in the world!  He's given me two quadruple bypasses and pulled me from the brink of death twice!"  Uh, huh.  Health care scholars call that "rescue medicine."  Or in unguarded moments, "Zombification."