Since Democrats have shut down the federal government because they want another $1.5 trillion bailout of Obamacare, it’s a good time to remind everyone that the law has been a wide-ranging and expensive fiasco. Virtually every promise made by Democrats regarding the Affordable Care Act has failed to come true.

Former President Barack Obama, of course, infamously promised that Americans could keep their preferred insurance if they desired, though he knew better. By the end of his second term, around 7 million people had been booted from their insurance because of the Affordable Care Act. Who knows how many have been dropped since.

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Let’s also not forget that Obama pledged, probably hundreds of times, that the law would reduce family health insurance premiums by “up to” $2,500 annually by the end of his first term. Premiums not only continued to rise during his presidency, but since 2010, they have spiked from $13,000 to nearly $24,000.

Democrats used to love to talk about “bending the cost curve.” Well, congrats.  

Obama also promised that Obamacare’s state exchanges would enhance competition among insurers and lower costs. Once these fabricated “marketplaces” were fully implemented, Obama assured consumers would be able to get “the same good rates as a group that if you’re an employee at a big company you can get right now — which means your premiums will go down.”

None of that happened. Taxpayers are now on the hook for 90% of the cost of those premiums. If the COVID-19-era Obamacare subsidies are allowed to sunset, taxpayers will be responsible for a mere 80%. Without the subsidies, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 3.6 million users would leave the exchanges. Obamacare didn’t create better healthcare insurance options for consumers; it created millions of state dependents.

Now, whatever your thoughts are on the proper size of social programs, the exchanges were sold as self-sufficient engines of capitalism even as Democrats were doing everything to inhibit market competition. As predicted, many Obamacare exchanges now only have a single insurer. Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and Humana have all basically abandoned them.

One of the most contentious debates over the Affordable Care Act was the cost. Democrats stressed that the project would cost less than a trillion dollars over a decade. If you dared question the estimates, fact-checkers would swarm and call you a liar.

But it was Democrats who initially sold Obamacare as a deficit-neutral bill by dishonestly measuring eight years of service against 10 years of taxes.

On numerous occasions, Obama promised he would not add “one dime” to the debt. Democrats, in fact, guaranteed the Affordable Care Act would help reduce deficits. There’s no definitive number on the debt added by Obamacare since its passage. It is likely in the hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions.

Democrats promised that penalties on employers who failed to provide health insurance would bring in “substantial” revenue to allay costs. Once the Affordable Care Act was passed, Obama ignored the law by delaying implementation, before “tweaking” the law without any constitutional authority. The employer mandate now brings in only a small fraction of promised returns.

Obama also kept delaying the Affordable Care Act’s “Cadillac tax,” a levy on alleged “gold-plated” private employee plans. The tax was meant to discourage upper- and middle-class workers from obtaining the types of plans Democrats deemed too generous as a way of lowering costs but also raising “revenue.” Once labor unions found out they also had “gold-plated” plans, well, Democrats dropped the idea, which was repealed in 2019.

The individual mandate, which the Supreme Court miraculously transformed into a “tax,” now exists only in conceptual form, despite Democrats’ promise that it would generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue. It brings in zero dollars.

So it’s no surprise that Democrats have been demanding Republicans bail out the poorly conceived law since its passage. When Congress refused to pass new subsidies in 2013, the Obama administration, again without any constitutional authority, ordered the Treasury to create a $7 billion per year appropriation for insurance companies participating in the allegedly self-supporting exchanges. 

When a district court ruled that the payments were unconstitutional, Obama ignored the decision. Don’t you love it when Democrats lecture people about norms?

When Democrats added new Obamacare subsidies to the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act to fund those with incomes 400% over the federal poverty line, they sold it as a temporary measure to get through the COVID-19 economy. Every Democratic leader referred to the subsidies as “a bridge” that was meant to help until the economy rebounded from the pandemic.

Here we are in 2025. You know what they say about temporary government programs.

THE DEMOCRATS’ RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN RANSOM

Aside from all the failed promises, the passage of Obamacare broke American politics. For the first time in U.S. history, a party unilaterally rammed through a massive national reform without any input from half the country. In their effort to appease a handful of moderates on the Left, Democrats larded up Obamacare with unenforceable mandates, taxes, and bureaucratic complexities that created the illusion of affordability. When they still couldn’t pass the bill using the traditional process, they blew up a bunch of governing norms to do it.

Now, Democrats want the GOP to save the law again, but they shouldn’t.