I'm just here to say this is completely accurate. I work in healthcare administration and I have a good understanding of the ACA and employer sponsored benefits. Our subscribers/employees had reduced benefits at a much higher cost. Many had to opt out and have no benefits and just pay cash for sick visits and prescriptions and just hope you dont need hospitalization or emergenct care from a serious accident or illness. This part specifically actually had little to do with the individual mandate. - Obviously that hit our population a little harder but these benefit costs were going to rise regardless of the mandate being in place. While taxes did increase slightly to cover all of these Marketplace plans, they pale to the increase in cost to actually provide these benefits, which results in lower take-home pay regardless of how you deduct it from the check. And sadly, these costs have nothing to do with your overall income of tax bracket. And in my opinion, even with what I just stated, that is not the reason why the ACA was/is an overall failure... but thats a different topic.