Why Regulatory Capture—Not Markets—is Driving Prices Up Across the Economy, and How the ACA Became the Perfect Case Study
Progressives claim to represent “the people.” They claim their legislation reins in corporate excess, protects consumers, and makes essential services—healthcare, education, energy—more affordable. However, the results seem to always tell a different story.
Every major sector that progressive politics has touched—healthcare, higher education, energy, housing, insurance—shares three characteristics of increasing (often skyrocketing) prices, collapsed competition, and regulations have ballooned beyond recognition. This isn't a coincidence; it’s a system, and the American public is literally paying for it.
The core flaw of so-called "progressivism" is perhaps not its rhetoric (although it could be argued that it is as well), but its architecture. It builds massive regulatory frameworks that claim to discipline industry, but in reality, these frameworks become institutions of control that the largest companies end up conquering and weaponizing. It's fascinating that leftists and activists of that sort seem to either be unaware of this consequence or ignore it. This is also why I say that they don't love nor care for the poor, they only hate the rich and successful. It's Marxist at its core, but I won't go down that rabbit hole here.
This is the heart of regulatory capture, an old term for a very modern problem: the regulated become the regulators, and the public pays the bill.
Healthcare provides the clearest example—but hardly the only one.The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was sold as a cost-lowering reform. History now records it as a price-inflating, competition-destroying act of centralized bureaucracy that made insurance companies richer, government more entangled, and ordinary Americans more financially strained.
My position, for the record: Cost explosions in progressive-governed sectors are not market failures—they are policy outcomes.
So-called "progressive" policy relies on a deceptively simple formula:
Expand bureaucracy → increase mandatory compliance → force industry to absorb the cost → remove low-cost alternatives → allow incumbents to consolidate.
This formula is disguised as consumer protection and moral leadership. But at scale, it becomes an economic ecosystem in which the government and large corporations operate as co-managed stewards of industry—while small businesses, startups, and consumers get crushed.
Forked Tongue Policy
Progressives speak the language of rebellion but govern like centralizers.Below are the mechanisms they repeatedly use to create high-cost markets:
- Lawyers
- Compliance officers
- Lobbyists
- Auditors
Large corporations can afford this infrastructure. Small firms can’t.
The Data Speaks: Premiums Are Soaring
- For the 2026 coverage year in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, insurers are requesting a median premium increase of 18%—more than double the 7% median proposed a year prior.
- Early filings show proposed increases range widely, with more than a quarter of insurers seeking 20% or more hikes.
- One detailed 2026 projection shows benchmark Silver-plan premiums rising by 26% on average, with plans sold via the federal platform climbing ~30%, and state-run marketplaces ~17%.
- Administrative spending is massive: In U.S. hospitals, one recent analysis found administrative costs ($687 billion in 2023) almost twice direct patient care spending ($346 billion) — an admin-to-care ratio of roughly 2:1.
- A broader industry figure shows healthcare administrative burdens may account for as much as 25% of total U.S. healthcare spending, far above other advanced nations (e.g., Canada ~12%).
These numbers don’t simply reflect “rising costs” due to aging or innovation—they point to a broken architecture of regulation and market distortion.
How Progressive Regulation Sets the Trap
Mandates plus mandates plus regulators
The ACA mandated “essential health benefits,” standardized plan tiers (Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum), and imposed an individual mandate that forced many Americans to buy insurance or face penalties. These reforms removed lower-cost options and implicitly raised the baseline cost of coverage.
Captured Markets
With the individual mandate and heavy mandates on benefits, insurers were guaranteed a captive base. This reduced competitive pressure and allowed large insurers to consolidate: fewer players, higher pricing power, less incentive to innovate or lower cost.
Compliance Cost Inflation
Every additional regulation—reporting, audits, prior authorizations, network adequacy rules—becomes a cost that must be absorbed. That cost doesn’t disappear; it gets passed to premiums. The hospital data is telling: when administrative spending grows twice as fast as direct care, someone pays. That someone is the insured individual.
Subsidy Cliff & Cost Shifting
Many of the premium increases are mandated by subsidy expirations—not market forces alone. According to some analyses, like this one, without enhanced tax credits, out-of-pocket premiums could rise more than 75% for many enrollees. Subsidies mask price inflation, but the underlying cost keeps climbing.
Affordability Becomes Illusion
- A benchmark Silver plan in a state might cost $500/month today; a 26% increase moves that to ~$630—even before deductibles, co‐payments and network limitations. See here.
- For millions of Americans, especially small business owners or moderate-income individuals above subsidy cutoffs, this is a real budget hit.
- Competition is severely constrained: In many counties, only one or two insurers participate in the ACA markets, giving the remaining players leverage for premium hikes and network narrowing.
The effect is predictable: higher premiums, fewer choices, fewer entrants, more control by the big players—and the progressive regime congratulates itself on “coverage expansion.”
So why do I see this as a structural, not accidental, outcome? I'm glad you asked!
If the mission was to lower costs, the policy design would look very different. It would focus on reducing barriers, encouraging alternative models, decentralizing power—and shrinking compliance burdens. Instead, what we got were large federal and state agencies with expanded rule-making power; a compliance-industrial complex built around insurers and healthcare providers; incentives for consolidation rather than disruptive innovation; price inflation baked into the system.
From my perspective, or anyone who even has a semblance of economic understanding, this is regulatory capture in action! Look at it—the big players adapt, absorb cost increases, and channel them to consumers. Competition dies. Power centralizes, and of course, the public pays.
What Needs to Change—And Quickly
How can we reverse this trend and create genuine affordability? This won't be new, but this is what I am a proponent of:
- Regulatory simplification: Peel back needless mandates, reduce the burdensome compliance infrastructure, allow low-cost, high-choice plans.
- Choice-driven markets: Permit more consumer flexibility in plan design, private innovation, alternative delivery models (e.g., direct primary care, telehealth).
- Transparency & decentralization: Make pricing visible, let states and private sectors experiment, reduce one-size-fits-all federal mandates.
- Competition over capture: Encourage new entrants, limit insurer market dominance, prevent regulatory regimes from entrenching incumbents.
- Align incentives with cost-control: Rather than defaulting to benefit expansions and mandates, shift toward outcomes, efficiencies, and consumer empowerment.
This is not a rejection of protection or service. It is a rejection of the notion that big government regulation + big corporate insurance = affordability. In almost every case, the opposite has followed.
The ACA was sold as a beacon of “affordable healthcare for all.” Instead, it became the textbook case of progressive policy doing what progressive policy always does: consolidating power, raising costs, and reducing competition. The numbers are clear, the mechanisms transparent, and the consequences serious.
So-called "progressive" models offering more regulation and benefits may feel morally right (and I'm just being nice, because I don't even think of them as 'sounding' nor 'feeling' right, but for the sake of the debate)—but when they systemically (a word that leftists love) elevate cost, limit choice, and centralize control, they become economic brakes.
I'm all for reversing that inertia, restoring market vitality, reducing regulatory drag, and allowing real growth to flourish—which always results in better choice and prices for the consumer. This healthcare cost crisis is not the fault of free-market failure, but rather it is the outcome of so-called "progressive" regulatory design. Unless we correct course, the next decade will see even steeper bills.