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No, that's wrong. Please re-evaluate your views.
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Bending the cost curve was part of it. But since the days of Ted Kennedy seeking a HC bill, the primary aim was getting HC to those who couldn't afford it. A huge percentage of that category is people who could not make any meaningful payment toward it. So they were near entirely subsidized.
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Many of us can chew gum and walk at the same time.
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If we could have focused primarily on lowering premiums for people able to pay something and willing or already doing so, without using those dollars to subsidize care for people paying nothing, you could have put a lot of money back in working middle class peoples' pockets or given them far more bang for their HC dollar.
Now, of course, there are social reasons not to do this. But the question at hand was whether the ACA was primarily aimed at helping the middle class. I think it was secondarily aimed at helping them.
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In other words, you are ignoring the biggest domestic policy issue of the Obama years because it's not what you want to talk about. Got it.
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That's your view. I think the labor market changes afoot, which I mentioned, were #1, then the economic crisis was #2, then inequality caused by policy reactions to the financial crisis was #3, then the environment was #4, then HC was #5.
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Reading your posts is like reading a book review that doesn't talk about the book, but is instead a diatribe about how the author should have written about something else.
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You don't get to dictate what is the most important policy issue at any given time. People disagree about that endlessly. You may think HC was in Obama's term. Others, like me, think different issues were more important.
