Our company had open enrollment for our medical benefits this month. For the first time in awhile, the costs went up SIGNIFICANTLY.
Irrelevant if it's lowered in one area and raised in another (and, so far, I don't see any examples of my taxes being any lower whatsoever in the last few years).
Well guess what. We had our open enrollment a few weeks ago too. Guess how much mine went up? 4%. And if you include the employer paid portion, overall it's up 6%. That's about on par with previous years. So if Obamacare is responsible for these SIGNIFICANT increases, how come I'm not seeing them? I'll give you the answer. It's one of 2 things. Either your employer/insurer is using Obamacare as a convenient excuse to take a piss on you and jack up rates, or your previous "coverage" was piss poor and now you've actually got to pay a little more to get coverage that actually covers stuff. The former is not the fault of Obamacare. The latter is, but I have a hard time seeing that as a bad thing.
Where I work (a very large national engineering firm), they made it clear that the only part of the increase in rates this year attributable to Obamacare was for some increased women's preventive services (yes, including contraception). There really aren't that many other aspects of Obamacare that impinge on employer-provided health insurance (requiring coverage for dependents up to 26 y.o. is another - that went into effect last year). That was how Obamacare was designed - it had minimal impact on people who are already getting their insurance through their employers. In fact, not going for a single payer system is why it is so unpopular among liberals.
Now there may be more next year but blaming an increase this year on Obamacare is nonsense. Premiums went up where I work, but that was almost entirely attributable to increase use of medical services over the last year, requiring an increase in premiums.
And as for the GP's claim of no lower taxes over the last few years, it must be great making over $250K a year. (Federal) taxes for everyone else when down.