Obamacare’s Marketing Cost: Another Promise Broken

During the health reform debate in 2009 and 2010 that preceded the adoption of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), one of the prominent arguments used by advocates for national control of the health insurance market was that the existence of private market in health insurance led to “waste” in the form of advertising and marketing – costs of private health insurance that, it was claimed, raised premiums without benefiting consumers.