It protects their profits and gave them a whole new pool of customers who are forced to buy their crappy product. ACA or no ACA, health insurance is too high and health costs are insane. Both those are facts.

all we had to do was look at the results of mandated car insurance.
high prices, poor payment records.
In fact, one of DU's own members died as a result car insurance companies not paying out over the wreck he was in.

My own objection to the insurance was the mandated part...bad bad precedent.

My 2nd objection came later, once the limited coverage areas and limited choice of providers was known.

and a 3rd objection now that "you can keep the doctor you have" has been exposed as untruthful.

We need single payer.
We need single payer AND a system that will watchdog the thieves that try to rip it off
( see Medicare and Medicaid for examples of both)

because now we're forced to buy the inferior products that they're selling. We cant say "Bad, bad insurance companies" then send them a third of our wages.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/22/1761011/health-insurers-threaten-to-increase-premiums-even-as-profits-soar/

Some of the nation’s largest health insurance companies are warning investors that they’ll raise insurance premiums by as much as 116 percent next year, as the coverage expansion provisions in the Affordable Care Act go into effect and millions of uninsured Americans begin purchasing coverage.

The threats of premium increases come as the industry is experiencing record profits and are part of a well-coordinated publicity campaign to alarm Americans about the cost of coverage, while downplaying mechanisms in the law that will cushion them from rate shock. The effort comes as insurers seek more favorable regulatory changes that would, in part, allow companies to charge older people more for coverage. snip

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/19/1894641/unitedhealth-medicare/

By all appearances, UnitedHealth Group is having a stellar year. The mammoth company, which is the largest health insurer in America and the biggest manager of private Medicare Advantage plans, announced on Thursday that despite a 14 percent decline in earnings, it had still made a profit of $2.1 billion — and that was just in the last fiscal quarter. UnitedHealth also won a major policy victory at the beginning of this month when the Obama Administration reversed course on its plan to cut reimbursements to Medicare Advantage plan providers by two percent. In fact, the Administration went the entirely opposite direction and announce it would raise these rates by 3.3 percent — a swing of 5.3 percent in UnitedHealth’s favor. Apparently, that isn’t enough for the insurance company. UnitedHealth is now threatening to reduce its involvement in managing Medicare plans, claiming that its government reimbursements are still too low.

Each case is so different--it depends on what kind of insurance, if any, you had before; or, lacking insurance, what you COULD have gotten, and for what price (if anything) before the ACA, etc.—which would have depended on your age, your medical status, the type of policy you were buying.

My son signed up for an ACA policy in December. Sort of odd situation: he'd recently completed his Ph.D. but no job yet, and his university-sponsored policy had ended; his wife had quit her job because she's pregnant, and because the job was high-stress (she was on her parents' insurance, but was about to age out of it). They got either a silver or gold policy that sounded excellent to me: they knew they were going to have a big hospital bill soon, so they got something with low co-insurance—something they probably wouldn't have done, at their age, if they weren't anticipating a certain but unknown hospital bill, given the possibility of complications. Now (here's where it gets odd): normally one would think they'd have applied for the subsidy, being temporarily jobless and all. But they'd saved quite a bit of money to live on, and they didn't know what their income status would be for the next year. They decided that, rather than having to pay the gov't back at the end of the year, they'd just not take the subsidy—and if they end up qualifying for one during the year, it can come on their 2014 taxes.

Okay, so what did it cost without a subsidy? One of the top-tier policies, with someone already pregnant (I doubt she could have even bought insurance at all at that point, prior to ACA), for two people: $450 per month. This was several hundred dollars less than my daughter had paid eight or nine years earlier for a Cobra policy for just one individual. Another time, when she was between jobs once, she'd bought a cheaper but entirely useless, crap policy: the only thing she could get at the time, because of preexisting condition situation. It was honestly, not worth the paper it was written on.

And it used to be higher.. we used to pay nearly 750 for insurance.

"ACA insurance premiums will be rising later this year"

BOOM

As far as I know, there are no price regulations on premiums. The public option was supposed to be the competition that kept price gouging down. So all the companies can now raise premiums but price fix to within a certain amount of each other to keep the price "competitive". Win Win!

Those things must be addressed and soon or we are all screwn.

When the government designed the ACA, they deliberately made the decision to invite for-profit companies into the new system. It wouldn't work at all without the participation of the insurance companies because that is how it is designed.
The rules and regulations put into place to control the insurance companies work to a degree, but they are not bullet-proof - and if there is one thing profit-making corps know how to do, it's find a way around the rules and regulations. It shouldn't come as a big surprise that they are doing exactly that.

So, yes, the problem is the insurance corporations - but they are now part and parcel of the ACA, so you can't sever the one from the other. No amount of sloganeering in the world is going to cover up that fact.

A couple of other things to remember are:

Insurance companies have to spend at least 80% of the premiums they receive on actual healthcare. If they don't, they have to send that money back to the premium payers (employers or individuals).

Two of the very best parts of the ACA, no denial due to pre-existing conditions and no more charging women more than men for insurance, mean that costs will rise for everyone, at least in the short term.

I am unaware of this sort of a rebate. I never use my health insurance and have received no refund. Do you have any info, because I'm not quite sure how this works.

but rather at least 80% of total premiums have to be spent on actual healthcare.

80/20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule generally requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% of the money they take in on premiums on your health care and quality improvement activities instead of administrative, overhead, and marketing costs.

The 80/20 rule is sometimes known as Medical Loss Ratio, or MLR. If an insurance company uses 80 cents out of every premium dollar to pay for your medical claims and activities that improve the quality of care, the company has a Medical Loss Ratio of 80%.

Insurance companies selling to large groups (usually more than 50 employees) must spend at least 85% of premiums on care and quality improvement.

If your insurance company doesn’t meet these requirements, you’ll get a rebate from your premiums.

https://www.healthcare.gov/how-does-the-health-care-law-protect-me/#part=10

Never expect to see anything back from my insurance co. They just keep raising my premiums.

We just need to stand tall and take credit for Obamacare. Be proud of it. Know it for the big improvement it is and reflect that in every way.

And we need to be crushing Republicans with the fact that nothing they say ever turns out to be right, not responding to them point-by-point as if they have even the slightest credibility. The Republican Party's guy, George W. Bush, is the classic example of Republicanism.

"You know, Obamacare's insurance costs are too high if you don't qualify for subsidies."

"I understand that the Republican Party has a lot of nonsense points to try to sell people. This is just the latest from the George W. Bush party. None of these stories ever end up being true. They shut down the government, and that is true, but their Obamacare 'stories' are always pure hooey. The American people can ask themselves if they know someone helped by ACA if there are any doubts."

ACA changed that for the better.

speak to 'your' price gouging insurance corps.