[jrockway]

I don't think the Affordable Care Act made things worse overall. People without jobs can get health insurance (how they afford it, nobody knows), and people with preexisting conditions can get coverage, which is actually a really big deal. (As an aside, there is an interesting Vice documentary about how people in red states hate Obamacare but love the Affordable Care Act. Many people getting medical attention for the first time in their lives. That's a win. We just need to get over the "us vs them" mentality around healthcare.)

Being extremely selfish for a moment, I can see the argument for how it got worse. For ultra-rich software engineers like us, yup, it got worse. There are basically the same number of doctors as there was before the ACA, but now more people can see them. This means you have to wait for appointments. I also think that medicine got ultra-industrialized What insurance covers and how much also decreased for us ("Cadillac tax" or something). I don't have many medical needs but I can tell you my insurance company tends to deny everything and you have to file 300 appeals if you even walk past a medical complex. It didn't used to be like that. But in the end, it doesn't really matter. You get paid a shit ton of money, sometimes you spend it on medical treatment.