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Notes -
WhiningCoil is correct in that the ACA means insurers make more money through larger claims. There's no downward pressure to reduce costs from insurance companies. When they destroy last year's plans and remake new ones (to get around ACA's maximum cost increases!) they just make them more expensive. There's no consequences for introducing a massive headache to everyone, every year, forever.
That's actually not my argument. I agree that the data shows premiums have continually outpaced inflation at the same horrific rate for the past 30 years. Obama promised that the ACA would reduce premiums. The CBO - which is trotted out as "non-partisan" by every NPC every time we're ramming through another enshittification mechanism through our legislature - predicted Premiums would drop by 13% by 2016.
The market competition we were promised was a lie. Instead we've watched massive mergers and regional monopolies emerge. Longer wait times, fewer services at urgent care, the death of the family practice, monopolies on software and technology, deductibles have tripled.
You can't just ask for data as a rebuttal - you would have to be blind to think the system is providing any more value for the money today then it did in 08.
In that vein, you and I both know that there's no "data" to point directly to a trojan horse, but the level of incompetence that the ACA has exhibited could easily count as malice. Almost every single promise was an outright lie, with perhaps the exception of covering the obese smokers who didn't have insurance. It's genuinely difficult to think of a more destructive force in the average american's health and wealth in my lifetime.
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