For many (most?) cases you can still buy individual market directly with the insurer via phone/website. My understanding is you have to go through exchanges for certain subsidy situations.

> The cost was less too

> Also the $300 plan I paid each month for sucked

First off, the old way was for an employer to handle it for you. If you had your own solo insurance before, I'm impressed. I had a hard time finding health coverage as a freelancer years ago.

But more to your point, the cost was less, and sucked, because insurers could offer barebones, high-deductible plans that didn't really cover much except for catastrophic needs. Hence why you encountered high payments every time you actually needed healthcare.

In addition, premiums cost more now because:

- The highest risk and most expensive people were excluded from coverage entirely, either because they couldn't afford it or insurers refused to cover them, which they are no longer allowed to do. As a result, insurers are paying out more to cover medical treatment.

- Providers and drug companies continue to raise prices, while insurance premiums are regulated and locked annually.

- Government subsidies that were initially promised to insurers to help them cover gaps as they figured out the first few years of the ACA market were eliminated prematurely (cf. Marco Rubio).

As a result, annual increases have jumped dramatically as they adjust to increased care, increasing costs, and drops in subsidies.

So premiums are up because (a) you have better coverage (due to regulated minimum levels of coverage), (b) there are more sick people being covered (either because they couldn't afford coverage before or were excluded), and (c) net costs have risen.

> forced those who do and work to pay and cover for those who don't

I think that's an overly simplistic way of interpreting the situation.

With everyone left to their own devices, the elderly/unhealthy are strongly incentivized to have insurance, and the young and healthy might reasonably conclude that their best bet is to not pay for insurance, that results in higher average premiums.

The downside is that if you have anything interesting on your medical history --- including many things in your past that aren't chronic conditions, but could be predictive of future health care costs in some circumstances --- you will be turned down without recourse. That's the problem with the pre-Obamacare individual health care market: it didn't work.

This is a simple issue of how healthcare Became more expensive, less accessible (primary care docs hard to find and not readily available to see you.. so we flood the ERs), harder to use(insurance companies throw up the gauntlet and don't want to pay for things prescribed) and a real pain in the butt to sign up for.

All the above happened because of Obamacare and its eye towards helping every man, woman and child access to affordable healthcare. But that mantra goes against capitalism and thus creates a system where care is worse because insurance companies who once covered most things aren't so they have enough money/profit to pay for those men, women and children who are poor and can't pay. That demographic is the winner and all others are the losers in this game. It's a losing game either way and soon for the poor so and again see ya Obamacare ... socialistic ideas working within a capitalistic system is going to fail.

If it was completely socialistic it might work, but heck no the govt already taxes me enough I don't want them taxing me at 60 to 70 percent!

Hopefully it is replaced with a better system! Time will tell.

*typed on crappy iPhone 7 whose auto correctness/AI needs work!!!

My $300 Obamacare plan was horrid! Love Obama but see ya Obamacare!

The number of requests per seconds doesn't matter, what matters is the complexity of the logic behind the request.

The ACA/Obamacare doesn't have a healthcare.gov traffic problem, it has a "it's a piece of shit" problem.

Of course, this is not the purview of engineers working on healthcare.gov. The point there is that we all get excited about building monuments to technology while completely forgetting the problem that had to be solved in the first place.

Someone will invariably say something like "20 million people have insurance now that they didn't have before!" or some other fabricated number. Let me address that now.

First. The President of the United States of America promised ME and my family that we could keep our plan, our doctor and, on top of that, we would save $2,500 a year. No need for a link, it's all over YouTube. He made that promise dozens of times.

I don't care of one or a hundred million people got insurance. The POTUS made a promise to families. If someone in business made such a promise and then reality was exactly opposite, in an unbelievably grotesque way, the smallest lawsuit for breach of contract and fraud would have them curl-up into a fetal position and cry.

Oh, yeah, and the rich part is that they stick the IRS on us. You know, the Gestapo-like, most-feared, we-can-ruin-your-fucking-life agency in the US now has hooks into your healthcare. And this is OK, how?

The POTUS lied to all of us. Period. The fact that there are people with insurance now is irrelevant. My family is playing the equivalent of a home mortgage for health insurance. How could anyone even remotely tolerate this from our elected officials.

Now, to address the "insured".

Most of these people have been shoved into Medicaid. The magic pill that solves it all, right?

I am not going to go into a long explanation. ACH/Obamacare represents the largest theft of personal property in the history of this nation. Why? Here, go learn something:

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate-recover...

Short version: These "insured" have signed over their personal assets to the government. All care they receive --by law-- requires reimbursement and the government is REQUIRED by law to recover costs.

Wonderful, isn't it? So many people now have insurance! So many people who have no clue the government just sunk their hooks into their estate. What a country!

I don't particularly like Trump but I hope he shreds Obamacare to little pieces, it is nothing less than the largest criminal act ever perpetrated on the American people.

Obamacare forced our insurer to cancel our plan.

First lie: "If you like your plan you can keep it".

The new plan was $1,450 per month and a $9,000 annual deductible.

Second lie: "A family will save $2,500 per year".

Even at that, we lost many of the doctors.

Third lie: "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor".

There's more in the details (co-pays, etc.). The above would be enough to throw any business person in jail for fraud. Yet we somehow tolerate and rationalize our elected officials behaving this way.

I don't particularly like Trump but if anyone is wondering why he got elected, well, start by understanding the true depths of Obamacare and go from there.