Thankfully the cost controls are existant, at least, which is by inspection better than the status quo. This existence also renders your conclusion on costs a complete non sequitur.
Trivia: as much as conservatives hate Obamacare (spoilers: a lot), they can't resist using the cost savings it generates in their stunt budgets because the numbers don't work without the Obamacare savings.
Pair ineffective cost controls with a massive, complex, bloated, ineffective framework, and it doesn't seem to follow that the result is by inspection necessarily better than the status quo. Nor was my conclusion on costs, therefore, a complete non-squitur.
And since when is marginally bettering a fairly lousy status quo somehow laudable? That's a remarkably disappointing outlook.
Many Republicans hate it because their team lost, which is a poor reason to hate a bill, but just as poor–and perhaps more insidious–is that many Democrats cheer its passage, while knowing very little about it. Because their team won.
We've seen that story played out time and time again, in both parties, on myriad issues.
We really, really can do better than that, on all sides.
http://americanactionforum.org/research/premium-increases-fo...
There will be, of course, (truly) great stories about people who were suffering because of the evil practice of dropping customers from coverage when they get sick, and their finally getting the treatment their agreement with the insurance company should have entitled them to, but the total costs, and the costs for nearly everyone, will increase considerably, and some nice examples aside, it's unlikely to improve the quality of care, either.
It's a bad bill. We didn't have a good bill on the table, either–the whole system is fundamentally flawed–but it's a bad bill, functionally speaking. Whether it's really Romneycare, Obamacare, Heritagecare, etc., is irrelevant–it's a horrible system, and people who spend a good amount of their day trying to optimize things really surprise me when they don't acknowledge its numerous and deep flaws.