[aggieben]

> I'm guessing you didn't have to spend a lot of time dealing with procurement of individual policies prior to the ACA. I did, and its a godsend.

A lot? I guess not, but I did shop for individual (+family) insurance plans before the ACA, and I much prefer the before to the after. I absolutely despise the stupid metal-color tiers, in which every single plan is a cookie cutter of another within the same tier. Nevermind that plans that before ACA could be obtained relatively cheaply are now quite a lot more expensive - in some cases, more than double. So there is far less consumer choice, and everything is more expensive. If that's not a trainwreck, I don't know what is.

P.S. - I 100% agree about price transparency. I'm ambivalent whether the way to accomplish it is through a regulatory rule.

[karmajunkie]

Well, I did it a lot, every 12-18 months for about ten years before the ACA, and between trying to find out if a given plan actually covered something like maternity care (and under what circumstances), trying to gather and provide medical records for as much as ten years prior to initiation of coverage, and dealing with the first attempt to get a claim covered (when invariably the company in question would start making attempts to claim a condition was preexisting), there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that what we have now, while imperfect, is absolutely better than pre-ACA.