http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act
This and some light news stuff I have read is all I needed. I think some good critical points to make are:
Patient protection act is overall awesome from what I gather... The fact that insurance companies can no longer turn you away because of preexisting conditions is a huge win for a lot of people. Also the fact that they cannot charge extra money because of preexisting conditions or because of your gender or race.
The affordable care act is a little more unknown and thats how I presented it (when it briefly came up). It was more of a "honestly we just dont know exactly how it is going to pan out... On the outward image of it, it seems great because the idea being that there will be universal coverage. But the effects on hospitals and solo practitioners is still pretty unknown." I also brought up personal concerns I have with the fact that with every government oversight on healthcare gained, things tend to get worse for physicians. Even working as a medical assistant, I consistently saw aggravation with the fact that physicians have been trained and want to practice a certain way, but then they have insurance companies (particularly medicare and medicaid) that basically define how they are allowed to practice. So for instance a physician knows treatment A or medication B would be the best solutions to the patients problems, but the insurance companies may make the physician try out treatments x,y, and z for 3 months before they will allow Treatment A or B to be given. So its moving from the "art of medicine" to the "business of medicine" and how to deal with increased oversight by insurance companies.
Otherwise, it honestly did not really come up.