I'll trade your anecdote for mine: I have been working for Decent Companies for 15 years. Every year my payments went up, the company's prices went up, my copay

I'll trade your anecdote for mine: I have been working for Decent Companies for 15 years. Every year my payments went up, the company's prices went up, my copayments went up, and my coverage went down. The real nadir for coverage was in the end of the Bush years: I worked at Home Depot as a developer. That means that the plan covers a lot of badly paid people, and a lot of old people. I was paying hundreds a month, my doctor visits were $75, 20% coinsurance in hospital visits up to 10K, and a maximum lifetime benefit of 1 million: So if something really bad happened, like a stroke, they'd stop covering before it was all said and done! Since, my payments kept going up at similar rates, but at least things like maximum lifetime coverage has gone away. The one and only time things have dropped in price was last year, now that I work at a place where the average employee's age is 26. The company still pays $1600/mo for their side of the coverage, but since it's mostly developers, they can afford it. No company in their right mind will pay that when the employees are making $15/hr Healthcare has been less and less affordable since the Clinton years, it's just that it started very affordable. the ACA didn't make things noticeably different for the good plans overall: It's all still very expensive, and picking an employer that either has a young, healthy workforce, or has so much money they can pay for expensive plans, is the big difference between having good health coverage or not. So I guess that what I am trying to say is that if you had the insurance you claim to have had in the bush years, you were incredibly fortunate, and your situation was not common.