Eric, this is a lie, and you are intentionally mixing numbers in a way that falsely supports the lie.
In 2000, about $6,000 was the total premium for a family employer plan, not what families personally paid. Today, the roughly $26,000 to $27,000 figure you are citing is also the total premium, most of which is paid by employers, not families. Comparing total premiums across decades and pretending that is what families write checks for is dishonest.
What families actually pay out of pocket tells the real story. Employer contributions have grown alongside wages, and workers on average pay only a fraction of that total premium. On top of that, Obamacare expanded Medicaid, capped out of pocket costs, eliminated lifetime limits, required coverage for preexisting conditions, and provided subsidies that dramatically lowered premiums for millions of people who previously had no coverage at all. Before the ACA, people were denied insurance, dropped when they got sick, or bankrupted by medical bills. That is what “worked” in the system you want to go back to.
Health care costs have been rising for decades because of drug prices, hospital consolidation, administrative overhead, and technology, not because of the ACA. In fact, premium growth slowed after the ACA compared to the decades before it. Blaming Obamacare for a trend that started long before it existed is not analysis, it is propaganda.
And the last line gives the game away. Republicans have been promising to “replace” the ACA for more than a decade and have never produced a real plan, because the ACA is popular and because taking coverage away from tens of millions of people is not “something that works.” What you are selling here is not a solution, it is a talking point built on a lie.
