I'm curious as to why you say "the ACA is horrendous" rather than "The income cutoffs for the ACA subsidies are way too low" - I mean, it seems obvious to me that if you make a median salary and have a family of four that you need some sort of health insurance subsidy, but I don't know where the ACA subsidy lines are, or even if they vary per state or not.

I personally am in favor of just expanding medicare or medicade so that everyone can use them to get minimal health care if they need it. I mean, sure, if you have money, you probably still want private insurance on top of that, just like retirees today, but we've got a reasonable system for giving everyone over 65 a minimal level of care, and healthcare for younger people is a lot cheaper than healthcare for old people, so it seems like a big rich country like ours should be able to cover that bill.

but I don't think that is politically possible. I think this last election was in some ways a referendum on the ACA, and I would interpret the results as saying that many, if not most Americans think that you should only get healthcare if you can pay for it. Which seems weird to me, because as you point out, if you make anything like average money, healthcare for a family for three or four is impossible to pay for without a subsidy.

>I'm seriously considering returning to wage employment for health care benefits.

In the days before the ACA, I'd just get a full time job every time COBRA and CAL-COBRA ran out, because I couldn't get a plan at all without. I mean, I was happy paying $6K/year just for me, and that's what I'd pay under COBRA or CAL-COBRA but, once that ran out, nobody would sell to me. Maybe I wasn't asking the right people, but it wasn't like they came back with high numbers, they just said they couldn't cover me. It was weird, because while I did have a chronic condition or two, none of them were particularly dangerous or unusual.