If the ACA was so successful at reducing coats we wouldn't still be having discussions like this about the excessive costs of both care and insurance in the US.

We will never know how costs would have changed if we didn't implement the ACA, and cost is not the only metric of success. But it clearly hasn't led us to a place where people feel okay with what the industry costs.

The purpose of the ACA was to get more people to sign up for health insurance by creating plans everyone could access regardless of employment status or income. Solving the healthcare crisis in this country from top to bottom is going to take more than an act of Congress.

Also necessary to remember the ACA was only passed because of Democratic support in 2010. Republicans hacked away at the proposal before it became law, kneecapping any real institutional changes it had contained, and have effectively killed it since becoming the majority in the House and Senate in 2024. That bipartisan support piece is required in order for anything meaningful to happen.