| Many people expected the Affordable Care Act to “bend the cost curve” in health care, but some critics say that didn’t happen. |
| “We pay more than any other country in the world for worse health care,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said while campaigning for office in 2024. |
| Health insurance premiums have more than doubled since the major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, began in 2014, according to a 2025 Gallup poll. |
| Some observers say the same policies that make Obamacare popular with consumers are actually cracks in its foundation. |
| Here are the key provisions of Obamacare, which some experts say undermined its success. |
| One is the requirement that insurance companies issue health insurance in the individual and small-group markets to any applicant, regardless of preexisting illness. |
| Another requires insurers to price their plans based on the demographic profile of a community rather than of individuals or a smaller coverage group. |
| A third requires certain essential health benefits to be included in nearly every plan. |
| Finally, there was the requirement that most adults either buy health insurance or pay a fine. |
| Three of those requirements were popular with consumers. But all of them increased both cost and risk for health insurers. |
| Stakeholders warned that these sweeping changes could make insurance more expensive. At a minimum, they said, the requirement that plans cover a suite of essential health benefits could raise premiums. |
| The Board of Health Care Services at the National Academies warned that including too many essential health benefits could make insurance unaffordable for individuals and small businesses. |
| Insurers speculated on the legality of requiring people to buy insurance and warned that Obamacare wouldn’t be viable without it. |
| Some observers feared that younger people might stay out of the market, then buy health insurance only when they became ill. |
| Michael F. Cannon, a health policy expert at the Cato Institute, in 2010 saw the potential for a “death spiral” in the marketplace. |
| The Affordable Care Act included provisions to keep premium prices stable, but they were not entirely effective. |
| The first several years of Obamacare had lower-than-expected enrollment, higher-than-anticipated costs, and diminishing choice in the marketplace. |
| Data suggested that many younger, healthier people were going without health insurance. |
| Other data indicate that the cost of insuring Obamacare enrollees exceeded expected levels in the early years. |
| The increased coverage requirements had the predictable effect of increasing premium prices, according to a 2017 report by the Department of Health and Human Services. |
| Premiums increased by 22 percent in the first year and a total of 84 percent by 2018. Insurers began to leave the marketplace. |
| In the middle years of Obamacare, the market stabilized, and premiums even went down somewhat. |
| Then came COVID-19, and the enhanced premium subsidies created by Congress in 2021. Enrollment more than doubled, reaching an all-time high of 24.3 million in 2025. |
| Yet as enrollment spiraled upward, so did premiums, reaching a new high in 2025 of $497 per month for a 40-year-old enrolled in the most popular plan. |
| And the percentage of young adults never exceeded the 2014 rate of 28 percent. |
| Some of the largest insurance companies have said they find Obamacare unprofitable. |
| David Cordani of The Cigna Group told lawmakers in January, “We lost money in the exchange all but two years since 2014.” |
| —Lawrence Wilson |
| BOOKMARKS |
| President Donald Trump signed a bill on Feb. 3 to end the four-day partial government shutdown, The Epoch Times’ Joseph Lord, Nathan Worcester, and Jackson Richman reported. The legislation fully funds five sectors of the federal government through the end of the fiscal year while extending funding for the Department of Homeland Security until Feb. 13. |
| A U.S. fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone as it approached an American aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea on Feb. 3, The Epoch Times’ Ryan Morgan reported. The U.S. Central Command said the drone ignored de-escalatory instructions as it flew toward the USS Abraham Lincoln. |
| French police specializing in cybercrime, assisted by the European Union’s crime-fighting agency Europol, have raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X, The Epoch Times’ Rachel Roberts reported. The search followed an investigation into Grok’s generation of explicit ‘deep fakes,’ which X has taken action to stop, and the platform’s algorithm. |
| Critics are demanding Florida lawmakers remove a section of a proposed bill that they say would punish and silence anyone who speaks out against commercial food producers, The Epoch Times’ Troy Myers reported. A provision in the Florida Farm Bill outlines punishments for disparaging comments about producers of food products and would allow companies to sue for defamation and damages. |
