Hacker News Reader

Comment by ejstronge | Hacker News Reader

> Obama gave America over to the health care industry

This is disingenuous at best - health care costs have and will continue to grow every year. At least for its first few years, the ACA decreased the growth of health care spending. We'll see how it goes now that it's being played around with.

View on HN

I don't think that's true. I worked in Health Insurance for three years during the height of the ACA debates. I had high hopes for the ACA, but most of the positive provisions where crippled and the ACA varies heavily from state to state.

Had everyone been forced to buy from the marketpalce, we would have seen a more significant difference. After living outside the US and returning, I wrote about this last year:

https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-...

I took a look at your article - what points in my claim (i.e., annual health care cost growth decreased in the first years of the ACA compared to expectations) do you find incorrect? I'm happy to find primary references if you'd like.

EDIT: As I said before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16933813), an individual's health care costs depend most strongly on personal factors like employer contributions.

Part of the ACA was capping profit percentages, which just incentivises insurance companies to increase revenue and spending to increase real profits year after year.

Do you live in the US? My insurance now costs me more than half of my mortgage. Prior to the ACA it was about half of that.

I do live in the US. The growth figures relate to population-level metrics. At the level of the individual, other factors are also at play, like the willingness of one's employer to subsidize health insurance.

EDIT: a reference - https://wire.ama-assn.org/practice-management/health-care-sp...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com