I'm old enough to remember health care prior to Obamacare, and I can assure you it was broken before too.

Frankly the difference I noticed post Obamacare was a friend of mine was able to get insurance in time to not go bankrupt treating her colon cancer.

I can't get behind the idea that Obamacare is somehow what broke our medical system.

It was actually worse in that you could be denied health insurance. And I know a lot of people who are denied health insurance for very mundane reasons.

Insurance companies had teams of people who, if you made a substantial claim, would look over your application for anything that was amiss. And if they found it, they'd drop you so they wouldn't have to pay.

Your health record became a criminal record. You just hoped there was nothing on it that would prevent you from getting coverage in the future.

Obamacare has some very serious problems, but at least you can't be denied insurance just because you have back pain.

surgeon here. before Obamacare insurance companies denied payments if they deemed the issue pre-existing and were not told about it in the patient's application. I was in private practice for 10 years and now employed surgeon for 12 bc insurance companies notoriously deny payments for no legitimate reason. One time I saw a patient with an inguinal hernia and then fixed it. We were denied payment because my initial consultation said, 'presents with hernia he's had for 2 years, but now increasing in size and causing discomfort'. Their reason for denial was that he only had coverage for a year and had not told them about the hernia. From then on, my notes were very brief. 'Patient presents with symptomatic hernia'

Before Obamacare, some policies had lifetime limits, which could affect expensive treatments like cancer.

We celebrated the fact that now medicare can negotiate 10 drug prices. It should negotiate all drugs. The organization that gets the lowest prices is the VA. Congress could easily pass a law saying medicare will only pay that much and it would not cost much to implement.

System is very broken.

The ACA made broad and sweeping changes, but the "shadow" socialist component of the American healthcare "system" goes back to the EMTALA[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...

> There is nothing about American healthcare that resembles functioning markets or capitalism.

This is cope, just like "(socialist catastrophe) wasn't caused by TRUE socialism" is cope.

The mechanism by which capitalism causes concentration of wealth and power, and by which said concentration then creates means, motive, and opportunity for self-dealing is crystal clear.