What we have now is much much worse. We can fix the problematic portions of the previous law one problem at a time. It wasn’t perfect but it worked. If we have to wait until we have a brand new comprehensive healthcare package, it will never get done. Get it done now and start over from square one.
But the way it worked left a lot of people unable to afford insurance. I cancelled mine in 2010 when it went from $4k/yr to $9K/yr over the course of just 2 years. I have been uninsured ever since. In a country with a median income of $40K, you cannot have health insurance cost $10K for an individual.
Health insurance companies are supposedly just passing along the costs of paying for actual healthcare. If true, then we really need to find cheaper ways to provide healthcare so the insurance is affordable. $10K for an hour in an MRI machine is bizarre, as is $70K/mo for a nursing home, as is $1500 for a fifteen minute ambulance ride and $8K to be monitored for a few hours in an ER. My mother spent the last two weeks of her life in a hospital where they could do nothing for her lung cancer but feed her morphine and charged Medicare $243K.
There is something seriously wrong with the industry. It seems to run on the motto: “How much is your life worth ? Now hand it over whether we can help or not.”