>> That's the problem with Obamacare, people wanting a free lunch. It destroyed the private insurance market by banning the consideration of prior health condit

>> That's the problem with Obamacare, people wanting a free lunch. It destroyed the private insurance market by banning the consideration of prior health conditions, so now only sick people buy Obamacare. This isn't true. The incentive of paying penalties is so that young healthy people like me get insurance, so that I can dilute the risk pool for my sicker, fellow citizens. Insurance companies denying you based off of pre-existing conditions was the status quo because it was profitable (for the insurance companies, not for society at large) to insurance mostly healthy people. However, those sick people still need care, and so they end up at the hospital anyways and in doing so, caused outsized (due to severity) externalized costs (that the insurance companies got to avoid by pitting it onto hospitals / government programs). I notice that everyone who claims the ACA's fundamental premise of getting more people into the insurance pool is flawed also mentions their insurance premiums going up. The people (companies) getting a free lunch in this country are those who get to externalize the true and total costs of their actions.