That’s not the brutal cost of ACA, that’s the brutal cost of inserting businesses into healthcare via offering them tax incentives for no reason. Simple solution exists:
1) government provides taxpayer funded healthcare
2) government mandates everyone buys health insurance via healthcare.gov
3) government is not involved in at all, including Medicaid and Medicare and does not offer any kind of assistance to business to offer health insurance such as tax deductions
It seems to me that a lot of government laws are created assuming people will continue to do what they have been regardless of how the rules changed. The idea that people will do something different in response to a law, like switching from few full time positions to lots of part time positions to avoid paying benefits, seems to be completely dismissed.
It reminds me of therapist mandated reporting of child abuse making it so those most at risk of committing child abuse no longer seeking therapy, leading to an overall increase in harm. Or the HIV laws in California that resulted in people refusing to get tested. And it makes me think that limiting ones ability to own a gun based on mental health will result in people being less likely to seek mental help. Why is there such dismissal of secondary effects of laws even after seeing them occur?
