ACA health insurance will cost the average person 75% more next year

Yeah but if NPR is defunded then this isn’t a story. /s

The article sometimes throws in the term Obamacare — is it still popularly called that? And do most Americans know it’s the same thing?

Most people don't talk about ACA / Obamacare on a regular basis (re: popularly). And I think empirically we can say many people don't know they're the same thing.

This is, quite simply, a lie.

https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2023-section-1-cost-...

Figure 1.12 shows average annual premiums from 1999 to 2023. The ACA was passed in the middle of that range. It's a sustained upwards march, before and after its passage.

For all that cost - 2-3x as much as the other OECD nations spend, inclusive of taxes - we get shitty outcomes.

https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/04/ftotHealth...

A great deal of people do not, in fact, recognize that Obamacare == ACA.

It even shows up in poll data. This poll from Oct 2024 shows a 15 point difference when the wording changes. +34 favorable when asked how people feel about the ACA, but only +19 favorable when asked how they feel about Obamacare.

https://navigatorresearch.org/the-affordable-care-act-remain...

Labeling the ACA as Obamacare was an incredibly effective tactic to leverage the American public's racist tendencies against the public's own interests.

Prior to ACA all my colleagues in my peer group had employer provided health insurance that cost us very little, and it paid for virtually all medical bills except prescriptions. A HDHP was an option, but it only saved maybe a hundred or two a month, if that.

Today for most employees a HDHP is the ONLY option, and the cost is much higher than the old standard health plans were.

Before it was passed, I as a young 25 year old was unable to get individual health insurance at any price due to "pre-existing conditions."

Your company is passing the ever-increasing costs (which, again, have been on a steady sloped increase both before and after the ACA, since the 1970s; https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/health-expenditure-and-fi...) along to you, yes. This is a significant problem with our system; people think they get healthcare for $50/month, but it's really coming out of a reduced salary.

You're getting fucked (as am I!), but the ACA isn't what's doing it.

Entirely anecdotal: most Americans don't really get it. When people sign up for health insurance through HealthCare.gov, they're just picking a plan and paying their monthly bill. The website doesn't really make it front and center that it's ACA.

People may think they're paying full price because they make some monthly premium payment... which isn't true, as either the government subsidizes a portion of the premium, or you're getting group rates that are way cheaper than if you tried to buy insurance on your own. So even "full price" is receiving a form of subsidization through the operation of the program.

The disconnect is that the media and politicians talk about Obamacare like it's this free healthcare giveaway, so people who pay anything assume they're not on it. They could literally be using the ACA marketplace with 0 understanding that it's "Obamacare". Most people just perceive ACA as government overreach into healthcare, not realizing they're benefiting.

I'm sure it's by design.

Your peer group consisted of working people who could generally wake up in the morning. Generally healthy people.

Your insured pool now includes people who don't take care of themselves and treat the emergency room like a private doctor's office.

Other countries with government-controlled healthcare introduced wait times to encourage people to consider whether eating that extra donut was worth the health risk. I suspect we'll follow that path, too.

Came here to make the same joke.

Also it's technically Romneycare. The political right got everything it wanted with it, similarly to when Nixon passed HMO funding that tied insurance to work, basically forcing a work requirement in order to get healthcare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Maintenance_Organizatio...

This might be the biggest thing that caused US healthcare to double in cost vs the rest of the developed world, which provides universal or single payer healthcare to their citizens for free or nearly free.

Also the article got the numbers wrong. To be accurate, they should have said $400 or more, roughly $5000 per year for working adults pushing 40. More for families. That was 10 years ago when I was applying, I'm sure it's more now.

I'm surprised that a startup isn't providing transportation for medical tourism. A friend of mine lived in Costa Rica for a while decades ago, and care was covered even for noncitizens. So a round trip ticket and living abroad for weeks would still be cheaper than insurance plus deductible here.

It's to the point where half of you will block nationalized healthcare for the other half, even though we would continue paying double to cover you for free too. So much for objectivism.

Edit: I forgot my point, which is that I believe that healthcare may be a natural monopoly, which is when something that everyone needs must be regulated, or else it becomes a monopoly where the vendor charges as much as possible because people have no choice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Other examples include electricity, water, sewer, trash and probably education.

My rate and everyone I know had an increase of 60-100% after it was passed.

So not a 'lie' as you state. You are simply uninformed.

Shouldn't that be obvious on the payslip?

On the contrary, many plans were removed because they didn't cover enough, forcing many people into higher plans.

Rates have been going up since the 1970s, with a steady slope. Before and after ACA.

I don't doubt that your rates are going up. I doubt your attribution of the cause.

That's part of the problem; it's only legally required to be shown post-ACA.

https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/form-w-2-reporting-o...

> The Affordable Care Act requires employers to report the cost of coverage under an employer-sponsored group health plan. Reporting the cost of health care coverage on the Form W-2 does not mean that the coverage is taxable. The value of the employer’s excludable contribution to health coverage continues to be excludable from an employee's income, and it is not taxable. This reporting is for informational purposes only and will provide employees useful and comparable consumer information on the cost of their health care coverage.

So, it went from "I pay $50/month for healthcare" to "my paycheck says they're taking $2k/month! what the fuck?!" in folks' minds.

> Other countries with government-controlled healthcare introduced wait times…

No, they have wait times. Just like the US does.

https://www.statista.com/chart/33079/average-waiting-times-f...

"According to a recent study by the Consumer Choice Center, the average wait for a GP appointment in the United States in 2023 was around three weeks, two to ten times longer than in Europe. For example, in that year, the average waiting time for a medical consultation was two days in Switzerland, six days in France and ten days in the United Kingdom and Italy."