ACA: Not Really

Back in the days when President Barack Obama was still Illinois state senator Barack Obama, he too was an advocate of single payer, famously telling audiences that all we had to do was elect a Democrat House and Senate, and put a Democrat in the White House to make it happen.

[...]

The only grain of truth in the mountain of partisan lies Republicans tell about the ACA is that hundreds of large corporations have indeed been granted under-the-table exemptions from the obligation to provide health insurance to many of their workers, along with regulatory loopholes which let them to raise co-pays and deductibles to levels that will compel many of their low-paid workers to take their chances on the federal and state exchanges.

A single payer system would have freed US businesses altogether from the crushing burden of providing health insurance for their employees, and left no one without health insurance.

[...]

Lowering the Medicare qualification age to include everyone is and would have been a legally bulletproof, and Supreme Court proof way of guaranteeing health care for everybody in every state. But we threw that away.

[...]

In reality many families of modest means will choose low-cost plans with deductibles and premiums so high and coverage so limited that these costs will remain significant barriers to getting medical care even though they are technically “insured.”

  Black Agenda Report

And that’s all that matters. The insurance companies get the money. The poor insured get bupkis.

The US is one of the few places in the developed world in which a family can lose its home, and its children their college educations because of unpayable medical bills. We could have changed that. But we didn't

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.