>I love ACA, but I hate Obamacare

To be fair, ACA passed, and here we are. Healthcare companies are making more than they ever did. Have you considered that powerful propaganda machine works both ways?

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/08/insurer-profits-health-care...

Maybe that's because profit obsessed entities who are run by evil people are like the Borg in that they adapt and find ways around obstacles.

Think this is a failure of govt to use capitalism as an effective tool. More competition in the insurer space means non-evil players can afford to manage risk

When the company you work for is the one that decides on and buys your insurance, not you, how does a particular insurance company's "non-evil-ness" factor in?

If we had more insurance companies instead of a few that dominate the market, then your employer would have more choices. More competing insurance cos would lead some to differentiate by having a reputation of honest claim handling while also not being the most expensive option. It would then at least be possible for an employer to choose better insurance companies.

Why should your employer be the buyer? It's just a way of chaining people to specific jobs. I'm constantly perplexed by people's eagerness to rationalize the structure of an obviously dysfunctional ysstem.

I think that's a valid and even __good__ question.

The historical reason for why it's tied to specific jobs is because salaries couldn't raise for a period of time in US history and so jobs started offering other perks, like paying for all or most of your health insurance.

Now, companies get group discounts and still (often) pay meaningful percentages of many employees healthcare, and so getting private insurance is a nonstarter.

I think a main root cause of high insurance costs is failure of govt to break up health company monopolies and other impediments to a competitive marketplace like no individual mandate which should make it hard for smaller players to take on risk that they can afford to manage.

wrong take, companies started consolidated right after ACA passed.

It was less concentrated industry before the ACA.

the fundamental reason is as usual: too much government regulation that was erected with good intentions, but ended up becoming a competitive Moat that reduced the competition and entrenched big players. With that amount of regulation healthcare should be universal like in Canada or UK.

To maintain private healthcare sector, there should be less government

>too much government regulation that was erected with good intentions, but ended up becoming a competitive Moat that reduced the competition and entrenched big players.

While I agree with this, that regulations are often championed and even written by entrenched companies to increase the barrier to entry, the government can sue to block any merger they deem a harm to competition. Unfortunately they choose not to.

AI is a good example of this. If the government regulated AI, the only companies who will control and profit from AI are the ones who already have it.

It's not surprising that a law whose goal was increasing the customer base for a service also increased the profits of that industry.