it's so much better than how things were before.

This is very, very subjective.

For many people, it is better. All the people who couldn't get insurance, or it cost so much due to their ailments that it was absolutely outrageous. My mother, for example, who was paying $700 a month for her health insurance 10 years ago. She was constantly terrified of losing her insurance. Now, she's safe, and paying much less. My friend who has Rheumatoid Arthritis 4 now pays a fraction of what they used to, and has coverage for their $60,000+ a year medication which makes their quality of life go from effectively wheelchair bound to painless and fully functional.

For many others, it is not. I'm a healthy youngish person. All it has done is skyrocket my premiums and make my deductible so high I could literally break an arm and not have a dime covered by my insurance. My income isn't bad, at 34k a year, but it's decently below the median american salary of 50k/year. It has done me more harm than good. The HSA is nice though. Gotta love utterly tax free savings. I love saving. I don't mind paying in on taxes to take care of my fellow Americans, but ... that's not entirely what's happening here.

My father has an income in the no-man's land of upper-poor. He used to make 40k a year, but the housing market crash put the company he worked for out of business, as well as most others like it in the state. He found a new job, but for awhile, his hours were cut to the point where he made less than 20k. He now makes $24,000 a year, working full time. He literally can't afford health insurance, with his costs for his trailer, vehicle, diabetic supplies, food, etc, but didn't qualify for more than a pittance in assistance paying for health insurance. For a terrible bronze plan that only pays 60% up to the MOOP limit of nearly $6,000, he would have been paying $400 a month. That's literally one fifth of his income. $4,800 a year, and you can still incur up to nearly $6,000 a year in out of pocket costs. I couldn't put him on my health insurance, because he's not a dependent. He had to go to the hospital this year, for a diabetes related problem and now has over $20,000 in medical debt and had a toe amputated, which caused him to miss a month of work. If he had insurance he would have gone to the doctor earlier and it wouldn't have got to the point of a hospital stay and amputation. On top of that, he is literally earning less than $1,500 too much to qualify for AHCCCS. The line for AHCCCS is $22623.72. He's 63 years old, so, too young to qualify for medicare.

A lot of people are slipping through the cracks of this system and having a harsh burden thrust upon them as a result of it. The worst of it is felt for people like my dad. People who earn just too much to be considered in poverty, but too little to actually afford having a place to live, food to eat, and still be able to pay for health insurance, much less pay the bill when they have to go to the hospital.

There's pros and cons. It did some good. I like some parts of it, but there are undeniable problems with how it was implemented. I really wish we would have done universal health care instead. We're already paying into what is bordering on being a socialized system -- it's practically considered a requirement for everyone to have health insurance, but it's managed by private for-profit entities. We also have a lot of inflated costs which are due to hamfisted government intervention that should be fixed.