For profit insurers absolutely did, because they did the math and knew the mandate would more than make up for the new rules, and it did, hence the ever rising profits since. I'm sure neoliberals and Republicans don't see that as a problem because herp derp it'll trickle down lol, but everyone else correctly does.

That was the supposed trade, but surprise surprise, for all the protections the ACA proponents claim it enshrines, they still find way to initially deny 1 out of 7 claims, and now some with AI.

Great deal, a larger captive customer base without a public option, and still denying swaths of claims using technicalities and loopholes their floors of attorneys never stopped working on in bad faith since. Because publicly traded companies never, ever operate in good faith towards their customers, there's always an angle to goose earnings beyond what was overtly agreed to.

It helped some people, but it didn't address the core problem of American Healthcare that makes it the most expensive on Earth with some of the worst outcomes in the developed world at all: the profit motive middleman dictating who gets what care instead of doctors. The more Americans who prepared for illness and paid them in good faith that they murder, the more gold in their pockets, to the applause of the profiteers on Wall Street.

Just to be clear, the primary negotiator for ACA was Biden, not Obama. What did he do? Biden immediately gave away the public option as a show of good faith so they could pass something with bipartisan compromise (which always means corpos are screwing the people.) The result was pretty much what we have today, 30mil extra Americans funneled into the pockets of private insurance companies for worse care at greater expense.

It sounds like you’re saying scrapping this and letting private insurers go back to not covering people with pre-existing conditions is Trump’s plan. Hope you’re wrong, that would be exceedingly cruel.

There shouldn’t be a profit motive in denying people healthcare - in fact healthcare should be a basic human right we guarantee to everyone in the richest country in the world, which means private insurers have no business in this business.