All I know is prior to it my insurance rates were going up roughly 4% a year, out of pocket costs were next to nothing, and it paid for dang near everything. The year after it passed its never seen less than a 15% increase with an average of about 21%. My out of pocket costs went through the roof and the actual coverage is pretty sorry.
So there is a pretty dang good reason people oppose it.
The portion of the ACA designed to give people who are self employed or otherwise unable to be on group plans a way to join one is a good feature. I've compared the numbers and they are very close to what I see proposed to our group for similar plans. Had they left it at that and used another bill to address problems with group insurance would have, in hindsight, been a better way to go.
I've contracted the insurances for our company for around 25 years. We had some "proposed" 30-40% increases and one 60% increase to plans long before Obama took office. Most years it was 15-30%. After ACA they've been steady at 8 - 25% IF they offer the same plan. My employees never see this because I spend July -August poring through spreadsheets trying to find something we can all afford with similar features. Many years the decent policy I found the year before is "discontinued" and the substitute plan is much higher. They can't raise the prices over x% for your current plan--but they can discontinue your plan. All my employees see is "you will pay this much more and you will get this much less" but they have no idea what those things would have been. Without adjustments on my end, we have, in 25 years,
never seen 4% increases over identical plans.
ACA mandates really added to the overall cost of premiums, though, far more than I realized. My son has a "non ACA" plan since they're legal now. It's $25 copay and reasonable deductibles. He doesn't need colonoscopies, well child care, prostrate exams etc, so it works for him. It was $200+ less than what he had originally gotten on the exchange-- but exchange premium
is about what we would pay for someone his age through our company. And that's considerably lower than what you'd pay for individual insurance. It went up $10 between age 29 and age 30, still an 8% increase.
Also, I agree that companies shouldn't have been penalized for offering the best insurance. Maybe if only certain executives got it and the rest got $20000 deductible plans. But yeah, that was a puzzler to me.