Single payer via Medicare would be an easier solution, but the party in power hates its very existence. We're fucked unless the recount gives us two Senate seats and the White House. It's a very long shot, but it's our only hope right now.

So many Democrats insisted the ACA be weakened before they would support it.

Were going up BEFORE Obamacare/ACA even hit the scene, and they were skipping medical visits before Obamacare/ACA. In fact, many were going to hospital emergency rooms for their health care.

I hope those who voted with tRump/GOP to repeal Obamacare/ACA en total will be happy with the NEW and IMPROVED non-health care that they'll be receiving via Medical Savings accounts/vouchers, which will carry a lifetime cap on some of the medical care they might need if they or a family member comes down with a medical illness that requires a LOT of longtime treatment. No, Obamacare was not perfect, but to repeal and replace it with NOTHING is much worse. Single-payer is the only way to go, but that's a no go thanks to the GOP.

but most voters don't look that deep.

And the state governments refusing to create their own marketplaces. This is true in my state. The premiums are too high and the deductibles are outrageous and people just can't afford them.

Hillary really needed to acknowledge these problems and talk about her plans to address them.

Insurance you can't afford to use is essentially worse than no insurance at all because you're paying for something you can't afford to use.

There does need to be a public option and Hillary needed to be out there talking about it instead of ignoring it. It DID hurt her in several of the swing states. Then the Comey letter coming right after the reports of the premium hikes pig piled on and really hurt her badly.

The situation was so bad for so many people - and how much worse would it be today without the ACA?

Yes premiums went up. My husband's doubled ( I'm on medicare) but the subsidy goes up too.
Premium goes up... subsidy goes up. We actually are paying less this year than last year.
Now.. we got a bronze and the deductible is high, but better to pay $6,000 than 198,000 which was his doctor bills this past year.

I have a suspicion that most of the outrage came from people who were not even affected. 12.7 million out of the hundreds of millions of Americans are enrolled in a state or federal ACA plan (another 7-plus million receive expanded Medicaid, which has no cost), and of those a large majority receive subsidies for their premiums that offset any rate increases.

So, that leaves a few million, perhaps, who are earning more than 400% above poverty who were affected, to varying degrees.

Most enrollees have low or moderate incomes, a recurring theme in the third year of the ACA's exchanges. Nearly 83%, or 10.5 million of the 12.7 million exchange members, received the law's premium subsidies, according to HHS.

The percentage of people who received premium and cost-sharing subsidies varied greatly among states. People who make between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level are eligible for the premium subsidies to lower monthly payments. Those who earn between 100% and 250% of poverty and selected a silver-level plan receive the cost-sharing subsidies, which reduce out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and copays.

are seeing their rates go up and no subsidies available.
It is pretty easy for repukes to tell them that they are paying for insurance welfare at that point.

As a single mother with one income there is no way in hell I could afford those deductibles. We just would not go to the doctor at all and would not get any care...at all. If one of us got terribly sick we would have to go to the emergency room and then would not be able to pay the bill. My state did not expand medicaid or create a marketplace of their own, so I was barely making enough to keep a roof over our heads and because I was in default for student loans I didn't get any of my tax returns. For me, the system was of no help whatsoever.

I am convinced this was the turning point in Wisconsin. I live in a rural area, and Obamacare was suddenly the most talked about issue in the last month of the election.
Even people not on the exchanges blamed Obamacare and Fiengolds "deciding vote" on their own crappy coverage.
The Obamacare renewal dates with the much publicized rate increases could not have come at a worst time for Russ. The commercials were brutal.

Is really at fault. . People just want it to be. My share of ACA premium doubled. I don't blame the ACA. It is the market and the resistance to the ACA. And still way better than I had it before the ACA.

What I don't understand is whether the insurance companies did this to sink ACA or Hillary or what. Since the information is not clear it was easy for people getting these hikes to assume the worst.

billions of dollars in profits. They cry poor mouth and raise premiums because they have nothing to do with health care and everything to do with greed. To all the Republicans who whined about their Obamacare premiums, I would ask why they didn't shop in the private market. There is nothing in the law that mandates health insurance purchases only from the exchange. If you love the free market, call up your local insurance agent and get quotes from outside the exchange. What happened to GOP bootstraps?