The ACA Reconsidered‏

The estimated "tax penalty" for not having insurance under the ACA in 2016 will be $1450.

Several articles have been discussing the status of Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

The fact is that Obamacare has fallen apart without Republicans’ dismantling it. Almost all of its basic promises have failed, it is an economic shambles, and it is a political mess.

The ACA combines compulsory coverage of pre-existing conditions with a weak mandate that healthier people subsidize those conditions. But that mandate is self-defeating, guaranteeing coverage whenever the patient is afflicted. So not signing up has no risk.
As James Freeman reports in the Wall Street Journal, the ACA’s plethora of exemptions — there are at least 30 of them — ensure that a great many people — 12 million last year — will simply opt out. “It is easy to avoid or limit exposure to the penalty with some simple tax planning,” he writes. In 2016, there were supposed to be 21 million people enrolled in ACA programs; the Obama administration currently predicts that the actual number will be somewhat less than half of that.

Co-ops were created to avoid those insurers afflicted with the dreaded profit motive. Half of the co-ops have gone belly-up already, including large, prominent, splendidly subsidized ones in Kentucky, New York, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Hundreds of thousands of customers have lost their coverage as a result. Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money has been poured into these enterprises, to no avail.
Kevin D. Williamson writes, "markets work for most people, and of course there are exceptions to that. For 93 percent of the population, the solution to health-care reform is: Let markets do their thing. The only real argument is how big a check to write to those looking after the other 7 percent, and how to structure the payments."