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The health care exchanges may be open, but there's no question they're still kind of a mess.

"The rollout has been excruciatingly awful for way too many people," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius conceded to the Senate Finance Committee last week.

But mess or not, the law is going forward, people are trying to use it, and they have questions. Here are some of yours, and our answers.

Fran Heyman of Westchester, N.Y., wants to know, "If you are self-employed, is there a cap to how much you can make to use the Affordable Care Act insurance?"

No. There's no upper limit to how much you can earn and still be able to buy health insurance on the exchange. But there is an upper limit on how much you can earn and qualify for a subsidy to help offset the costs. That upper limit is 400 percent of the federal poverty level — about $46,000 in modified adjusted gross income for an individual and about $94,000 for a family of four. If you earn less than those amounts, you can qualify a subsidy that will lower your premiums. Earn more than that, you'll have to pay full freight.

Barbara Lorell of Bremerton, Wash., has the opposite question – what happens if you earn too little? She's a self-employed pet-sitter, and she says her income fluctuates a lot during the year. She wonders what happens if she signs up for a plan on the health exchange and gets federal subsidies to help pay her premiums, but then doesn't end up earning enough and should have been on Medicaid instead. Will she be expected to pay those subsidies back?

“ If you are self-employed, is there a cap to how much you can make to use the Affordable Care Act insurance?

In a global economy, does it make sense to allow workers to move freely?

Letting people go where the jobs are would improve the lives of millions around the world, some argue. But others say an influx of labor into the richest countries would devalue workers' worth and actually hurt more in the long run.

A group of experts recently took on this question in an Oxford-style debate for Intelligence Squared U.S. They faced off two against two on the motion "Let Anyone Take A Job Anywhere."

Before the debate, the audience at New York City's Kaufman Center voted 46 percent in favor of the motion and 21 percent against, with 33 percent undecided. After the two sides faced off, 42 percent voted in support of the motion while 49 percent voted against — making the side arguing against the motion the winners.

More From The Debate

But it was hard for Anthony to avoid thinking she might leave him.

"Because a lot of people, they don't want to be seen with someone that was ugly. What was it, like 70-plus surgeries, skin grafts? I really didn't want to leave the house," he says. "I just thought to myself, man, people don't know how to ask questions. They just want to stare and point."

He's thankful his wife stuck by him.

"The crazy thing is I'm still more self-conscious about what I look like than you are," Jessica tells him. "But I have grown so much over the past five years. I didn't ever think that I'd be as strong as I am today and most of it is from you. I can't imagine you not being in my life."

Today, the couple is attending college together.

They've been through "so much in so little time," Anthony says. "There shouldn't be anything that could tear us apart besides death itself."

Audio produced for Weekend Edition by Yasmina Guerda.

When we first met Danny and Annie Perasa in 2004, we heard about how their first date unfolded into an on-the-spot marriage proposal. We got a sense of Danny's big personality and his deep love for his wife. And we heard about his daily love notes to her.

To my princess, the weather out today is extremely rainy, I'll call you at 11:20 in the morning. And I love you, I love you, I love you.