I can't reply to your comment, so I guess I have to do it here. I feel like you are just listing reasons why having health insurance is good. I know all those r

I can't reply to your comment, so I guess I have to do it here. I feel like you are just listing reasons why having health insurance is good. I know all those reasons. That's not the question I was asking. But I think I probably attached this question to the wrong thread, or have made some other error, because we appear to be talking past each other. Edit to respond to your comment: Yes, maybe it is a dumb question! I don't know. It sounds like your answer to my question is a combination of: (a) denying my premise that we are actually paying more in aggregate for healthcare by saying we were paying for it before with higher service costs. So I guess you believe that the total amount paid for everyone's insurance premiums would have risen just as fast (or faster because of costly emergency room visits) without ACA as they did with it in order to continue covering those hidden costs that are now explicit. (b) fewer medical bankruptcies