You said you were trying to offer a rebuttal. So I aim to show that the counterarguments presented do not rebut the author's main point.

His main point is, roughly: 1) a variety of factors, including fear and antiselection, made for a broken health insurance market prior to the ACA, and 2) the ACA has substantially mitigated some of those problems.

> A quick example is the obvious contradiction in the following quotes from the blog:

The author is using the term in subtly different ways in different contexts. Not the best rhetoric, I admit. Yet, does his failure to define or consistently use the term "free market" undermine his thesis? I would venture not, but I'd be open to a counterargument. Otherwise this objection seems like just so much caviling.

> Later the post pulls out some talking points about Mitt Romney and some conservative think tanks, which are definitely relevant if you are trying to score political points instead of discussing healthcare policy.

The Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney both played significant roles in the history of healthcare in the US. Historical background is often very useful in a policy essay. That appears to be the reason the author mentioned them. You're free to disagree with the author's characterization of their roles. But you didn't.

> The closing section that glosses over the big problems with centralized planning systems (broken promises with no legal recourse, implementation issues caused by politics interfering with sound decision making) and finishes with enthusiastic exclamation points:

"Broken promises with no legal recourse" would be a pretty good characterization of pre-ACA health insurance, by the author's account. Why would you expect the ACA to be any worse in this regard?

My experience has been that private companies very often fall victim to "implementation issues caused by politics interfering with sound decision making." I've seen symptoms of that malady in every private health insurance company with which I've dealt. So, again, what evidence is there that this problem will be more acute under the ACA?

> It seems like political cheerleading to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Yes, I believe you did. The article included much substantive information about the inner workings of health insurance companies and the economic forces that drive their behaviors. Indeed, there is much more of this sort of thing than there is political cheerleading, the latter being confined to the final section.

The presence of some political cheerleading does not indicate the absence of a valid argument. The fact that the author feels strongly about a certain political issue cannot be used to rebut his argument about that issue.

> To summarize this piece, it seems like this guy felt guilty for working at an insurance company, but now he feels better because the he politically supports the ACA, which he feels is going pretty well. Is there an apolitical thesis for this blog post that I'm missing? Why was it written if not to express a political position?

The author offers technical arguments concerning a matter of public policy. He then states a political opinion which follows logically from those technical arguments. There's nothing invalid about this pattern of reasoning or argumentation.