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Obamacare's Broken Promises

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  December 18, 2025 8:00 PM

The competition for the most insufferable media personality is fierce. It can change daily, and sometimes multiple times a day, because the journalist class is not only extremely out of touch, but it has also ceased practicing anything remotely resembling journalism in favor of being propagandists and stenographers for the DNC.

Today's winner is John Harwood, who calls himself an "advocate of decency" in his X bio. He's decided to play a semantic prude about Obamacare, because that's what he does best. And I'm not going to call it Obamacare this time; I'm going to call it the Affordable Care Act, because that's important to my overall point.

Podcaster Michele Tafoya scolded Senator Amy Klobuchar for pointing fingers at Republicans. It was Democrats in 2010 and Democrats in 2020 who pushed the Affordable Care Act down our throats. They were the ones who voted for a sunset date on the COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Which means, of course, the current healthcare disaster is ... Republicans' fault.

Harwood swooped in to "ackshually" Tafoya.

Oh really?

Here's what we were told the Affordable Care Act would do for us:

  • Premiums would go down by $2,500 per year for families.
  • "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor...if you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep it."
  • "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future."
  • "This plan will be paid for...the middle class will realize greater security, not higher taxes."
  • It will reduce the deficit.
  • Reform will expand coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

Democrats also promised the legislation would end "pre-existing conditions" denials, prevent insurers from dropping your coverage, ban lifetime/annual caps, provide "free" preventative care, and limit out-of-pocket costs.

According to CMS, the Affordable Care Act is designed to “put American consumers back in charge of their health coverage and care. Insurance companies often leave patients without coverage when they need it the most, causing them to put off needed care, compromising their health, and driving up the cost of care when they get it. Too often, insurance companies put insurance company bureaucrats between you and your doctor."

I don't know about you, but that sure sounds like the Affordable Care Act was supposed to "fix" everything, doesn't it? Democrats promised us the healthcare equivalent of unicorns and rainbows. What we got was more akin to the comically bad "Willy Wonka Experience" Glasgow put on last year.

And nearly all of those promises have largely been broken over the past 15 years.

If they weren't, why would Democrats say we're facing a "healthcare crisis"? Why would premiums be poised to skyrocket if Congress doesn't agree to use more of our tax dollars to mask the true costs of health insurance? 

But perhaps the most damning counter-argument to Harwood comes from Harwood himself.

Here's what Harwood wrote (emphasis added):

Requiring everyone to obtain coverage means that premiums from those fortunate enough to never face crippling expenses an protect the small number who do. That principle allowed the ACA to prohibit insurers from denying anyone coverage, even those with expensive pre-existing conditions.

It prevented insurers from jacking up premiums on beneficiaries who suffer new health problems. Young, healthy people paid more for comprehensive ACA insurance than for the bare-bones plans many had bought before – and many complained about that. But those higher premiums protected them against future medical misfortune, too.

With characteristic hysteria, Republicans warned the ACA would kill jobs and balloon healthcare spending. In fact, it did neither – even as it cut the proportion of Americans without health insurance in half.

No matter how many times Republicans call Obamacare “a disaster,” the popularity of its protections prevent them from repealing it. Those protections cannot be replicated by old GOP stand-bys, such as state-level “high-risk” pools or health savings accounts purporting to turn patients into medical bargain hunters.

That leaves brain-dead bluster from the likes of Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer, who derides the ACA’s “fake economy” that insures freeloaders at the expense of the hard-working few.

That, too, sounds like Harwood believes the Affordable Care Act fixed everything that was wrong with American healthcare, doesn't it?

The reality is this: Democrats told everyone the Affordable Care Act would solve all of America's healthcare problems. It didn't. It made them worse (and, as I've argued, by design). But acknowledging that reality is something Harwood is incapable of doing, because that requires a level of intellectual and journalistic integrity he's incapable of possessing.