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Comment by dublin | Hacker News Reader

Obesity may be a factor, but it's stupid to think that it has anything like the impact that boneheaded government policy has on healthcare costs. Obamacare was, and is, a disaster, driving up costs while producing worse outcomes. (I've worked as a CEO in a healthcare tech startup since then, so I've got better insight than the average bear.)

The vast majority of people actually need those "junk plans" Obama eliminated: Catastrophic coverage plans with fairly high deductibles (which HSAs would handle after a few years...)

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> Obamacare was, and is, a disaster, driving up costs while producing worse outcomes.

I'm not sure I'd call it a disaster, but I will agree that ACA did absolutely nothing to address the core issue:

Health care is just too expensive.

I crashed my mountain bike in the summer of 2022, broke my arm and scraped up my knee real bad, though managed to put my bike back on the rack on my car and drive to the ER one-handed. They did an X-Ray, confirmed the breakage, gave me an arm sling and a prescription for painkillers, and cleaned up my knee. Total visit was 20 minutes. Without insurance, it would have cost me nearly $3,000.

$3,000 for 20 minutes of work between an X-Ray tech, 1 doc, 1 nurse, and 1 person at the front desk.

I understand that there's overhead, but I still think that cost was 5x what it should have been.

The ACA was a fantastic tool, enabling millions more people to access insurance that will actually pay things. If this is your analysis, my assumption is that you work in a healthcare adjacent world like BNPL and don’t actually have even the vaguest understanding of what the ACA is, does, or includes.

We can start with the simple fact that catastrophic plans still exist and that they actually cover things, now. That you think they both don’t exist and we’re somehow better before defies belief.

Catastrophic plans are only available for those age 30 or below.

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