[mobilefriendly]

No it didn't, it reduced choice and drove up insurance costs by mandating that all private insurance cover everything + kitchen sink. My single brother's cheap catastrophic plan was OUTLAWED to force him onto the ACA exchange. The only thing ACA has done on prices is pass rising costs to taxpayers (more than 80% of ACA participates are subsidized) and the exchanges are in a death spiral because anyone who can escape them is doing so.

Another thing-- the data on prices are a flat out LIE, the government is also making massive payments to the insurance companies directly -- their prices don't reflect their actual costs.

[tptacek]

I'm sorry you feel that way, but that's simply not what happened. I cofounded a company that provided insurance to ~40 full-time employees (and provided insurance before the ACA was passed), and the costs you're seeing today are in line with where costs were outside the ACA and prior to the ACA.

No matter what you think about prices, though, the most important thing the ACA did was create a nationwide requirement for guaranteed-issue insurance. However expensive you think insurance is, it's more expensive to be flatly and irrevocably restricted from buying your own insurance at all, which was the status quo ante of the ACA.

[mobilefriendly]

It isn't what I think about prices, it is the facts, ACA exchanges up 34% YoY. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/25/most-popular-obamacare-plans...

[spost]

Nobody upthread of you is arguing that health insurance prices did not go up after the implementation of the ACA. The argument is that the rate of increase has decreased. I don't know if this is true, and don't have data to argue one way or another, but you and the other people in this thread are arguing about different numbers.

[unclebucknasty]

>ACA exchanges up 34% YoY

Stating "YoY" gives the false impression that this is the average increase over some number of years. However, this was simply the projection for 2018 and the article provides the reason:

"The price increases are fuelled by market uncertainty and the elimination of key federal payments to insurers."

[AFNobody]

> The price increases are fueled by market uncertainty and the elimination of key federal payments to insurers.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/17/decision-to-kill-obamacare-p...

That price increase was engineered by the GOP by cutting the payments from the budget followed by the Trump Administration's "finding" that they had no authority to spend the money.

I genuinely hope your posts are just virtue signaling created by a desire to appear as one of the faithful.

[DoreenMichele]

A little data that agrees with your impression:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwh...

[tptacek]

That article, aided and abetted by the terrible writing in the Brookings article it's criticizing, is comparing apples (the rate of increase) and oranges (the actual increase). There's no controversy that health insurance rates are increasing; they've been increasing dramatically since the turn of the century.