> It's obvious to every socialist that this move was stupid

Is it? Or is this post hoc rationalization? I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment, but it’s hard to deny that there are questionable takes on both ends.

I agree with you that not every regulation equates to socialism, and it’s ridiculous to claim it is. However, the narrative of “insurance companies bad” is incredibly prevalent among left-leaning perspectives, and any regulation around insurance premiums tends to be automatically celebrated as a clear victory.

Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

> the narrative of “insurance companies bad” is incredibly prevalent among left-leaning perspectives,

Perhaps it is, I don't have enough insight to know. It's obvious (to me) that this is clearly over-simplifying things.

> Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

Is it actually a free market argument? Maybe it's not possible to provide that service at that price point. I'd think that the free market argument is that the price is already as low as possible, otherwise such a competitor would already exist and have outcompeted everybody. Such an argument has other issues though, like inertia, scaling effects, price-fixing and such, all of which are working against a free market though. Which is why a truly free market needs regulation, otherwise it ceases to be free.

> I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment

Honest question: Why? I've found that reality is complicated. It's rare to find saints on "one side" and "pure evil" on the other. The truth is often times that there are many issues, many interests, many world views, and typically even more than two sides. Uncovering the truth usually requires avoiding partisanship and have an open mind about understanding the interests of every involved party. That necessarily leads to "both sides" arguments. Not common in hyper-polarized discourses, unfortunately.