I and others have said for years that the ACA was designed to be from the very beginning to be a clusterfrack of Biblical proportions. I remember real experts (not "government" experts) who repeatedly said, "regulating the healthcare insurers was the worst possible place to cut costs." If the full ACA had been implemented, the people would been begging for anything other than the ACA... Which is when the Democrats would have rolled out a real single-payer, nationalized health-care system.
Just so you know, because I knew this when the ACA was passed, the "individual shared mandate" in 2015 was $325. If Trump and the Republicans had not ended the mandate, on April 15th, 2017 (after Obama was out and Trump/Hillary in) would have been $695, about a 125% jump. the numbers are on the top of page two in this Congressional Research Service document.
Why do I bring this up? Because when government has control of health care, they have almost total control of you. They can do almost anything they want under the guide of "improving health outcomes." That can mean "sin taxes" on sugar, meat, eggs and caffeine, plus more sin taxes on alcohol, tobacco and anything else the government declares is "bad for you."
You think I'm joking? You think I'm being a conspiracy theorist? How about this. The UK, with its' NHS and nationalized health care system, is considering regulating food portions: Pizzas must shrink or lose their toppings under Government anti-obesity plan.
We are already on the way there. Have you noticed that every menu board, every printed restaurant menu has the calories for every item, "so you can make healthy food choices." And the government mandates the font, font size and font color of all of those calorie counts. It's not a big step to go from mandating calorie counts on menus, to the UK's plan to limit portion sizes.
Let's think this out for a minute. At McDonald's, a Big Mac and a large fry will run you 1,050 cal. Let's say for a moment the Big Mac and large fries are outlawed, what will you do? Probably get something like two Bacon McDoubles and a medium fry. This will cost you 10 cents less, the problem is the second choice has 1,240 calories, so anti-obesity-wise, it's heading in the wrong direction.
The next (Leftist) logical control step is to nationalize restaurants. That means McDonald's, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Chipotle, Subway and all of the other places will become a cafeteria system where you get your government-mandated three meals a day. The good news, all of the employees will become government workers, so they'll get $15/hour. The bad news is, you walk in, scan the RFID chip in your hand, the computer in the back of the store retrieves the diet portion of your EHR (Electronic Health Record) and you are served what you are supposed to have. You don't have to (or can) say anything. Oh, and no meal trading like elementary school. The police stationed there will see to that.
I probably won't see this, but unless this is stopped and now, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will. Because when government takes control of part of your life, your ability to choose for yourself disappears.
There are some things that come free yet have too high a cost.