The real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable. President Barack Obama’s signature achievement allowed people to buy insurance on marketplaces with subsidies based on their income. The architects of the program assumed that risk pools would be bigger than they turned out to be. As a result, policies cost more than expected.
To salvage the program, Democrats expanded subsidies to entice more people to buy plans.
I wrote about this 9 years ago in a 50+ page analysis. To understand what went wrong with the ACA, read the paper I wrote in 2016: ACA Individual Market is a de-facto “High Risk” Insurance Pool (This is a 13-page shortened version of a 50+ page paper I wrote)
The ACA turned the already small individual market into a high risk / high cost insurance pool. The design, by MIT health policy economist Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D. could never work due to fundamental design errors. Most of the blame falls on him – but the Democrats who supported the ACA (no Republicans supported it) failed to adequately vet his failed design.
The comments by WaPo vindicate what I wrote 9 years ago.
