The new federal healthcare marketplaces open for enrollment in less than a week on October 1. If you are a bit confused about it, that's no surprise. The White House has done a mediocre job publicizing the new marketplaces, and opponents of the Affordable Care Act, now largely called Obamacare, have been spreading all manner of bullshit regarding the nightmare that awaits us all when our insurance premiums go up 2,000 percent or whatever. The good news so far is that states that have gotten ahead of the curve are reporting that most of their citizens will be paying substantially lower health insurance premiums through the marketplaces.

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Now there's a quick way for you to get an idea of what's in store. Thanks to NC Policy Watch for telling readers about the Kaiser Family Foundation's new online calcuator. It uses data available from the states on health plan premiums, asks for local zip, income, family size and ages and gives you an estimate of your annual cost under Obamacare in North Carolina. According to NC Policy Watch's calculations, a 25-year-old single person in Raleigh with an income of $18K is estimated to pay $64 a month for a comprehensive health plan. My own calculations for my family show that the three of us could wind up paying less than I've been paying for my insurance alone.

Unfortunately, most of the news about the upcoming launch of Obamacare has centered around Tea Partiers going nuts and spreading outright lies about the program, particularly the smugly weird Sen. Ted Cruz ("Joe McCarthy without the liquor bloat") and his faux "filibuster" of Obamacare. As Think Progress points out, however, "when it comes to the realities of health reform, it couldn't matter less." The fact is that even if Tea Partiers in Congress shut down the government, it won't stop the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Follow the link to see why not.

The law's inevitability hasn't stopped some GOP pols from trying to gum up the works, of course, such as in North Carolina and other states where Republican "leaders" have refused to extend health coverage to more low-income citizens by rejecting billions of dollars from the federal government to expand Medicaid. In any case, and no matter how much the right may piss and moan, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land and enrollment will begin next Tuesday. Go ahead and figure out your premiums using the Kaiser calculator. And when you start enjoying your lower premiums next year, be sure to remember which politicians did everything in their power to keep your payments high.