>>I think it's a Freudian slip to say "Thanks, Obama?" with a question mark, as it's hard to make a case that ACA has had a major impact on the reduction in inflation. A much more plausible explanation is the slow recession recovery and the overall slow growth since 2009.

If Obama is responsible for every negative as some would have it- then equally he's responsible for every positive. If you want to apply rational thought to the latter - then why not to the former?

>>ACA's main objectives never included reduction in inflation anyway.

Actually one of its main planks was reduction in healthcare spending. ACA is far wider-ranging and more ambitious than many realize.

>>Bottom line - there's no compelling or interesting argument that ACA has led to significant improvement in U.S. health care. If UHG actually goes through with their talk on pulling out, you've got a disaster waiting.

I prefer to wait for the next Commonwealth survey to see whether Obamacare has started to lift the US system out of its last place delivered by the system you seem to prefer. Certainly there's nowhere to go except up.

As for UHG- I'm guessing that because they're such a big insurer, people think it will hurt the ACA if they pull out? My take is that nobody is indispensable, especially if they have only 6% of ACA exchange policies, so competitors will enjoy a brief blip and life will go on apart from the Chicken Littles trying to make something of it. UHG will be rewarded with another share price drop (see what happened in November when they made the threat) and people will marvel why they didn't learn from their experience spurning the California exchanges first time around. So in the unlikely event that UHG does burn its bridges again: seems to me the sky is gonna stay up there where it belongs in the 12 or so states where UHG participates in the exchanges, no matter what it does.