As a straight, white, upper class-ish woman who is unlikely to need an abortion in the next 4 years (and could easily afford to travel to Mexico for one, or an IUD, etc), the ACA related issues are what is most likely to affect me during Dumpster Fire's presidency.
We'l be able to retire when H is about 50 and I am about 45. That is 15-20 years without Medicare.
When H was 36, he had a routine EKG, which was abnormal, then an echo, then a stress test, then a cath, then a triple bypass. No family history. Not overweight. Not a smoker. Exercised regularly (he was famous in the hospital for being their only patient who had ever run 5 miles the day before being admitted).
He will never be able to be insured on the individual market.
My mother was diagnosed with colon cancer 8 years ago. It was a genetic type. No worries, she is fine. My siblings and I, if we had the gene (50% chance- none of us have it) have a ~100% chance of getting colon cancer. No matter how healthy we are before then. If we were on individual insurance we would be dropped instantly.
The individual market was shit pre-ACA. People bitch about ACA prices, but when H was self-employed for a year (at the time COBRA was extended to 18 months during the recession) our premiums were 1500/month for a family. And that was a 8 years ago! And it was a HD plan with a 10K OOP Max (which we hit that year, yay us!).
We looked into our state's high risk pool in case H continued to be self insured when COBRA ran out. His condition wasn't on the list, so he didn't qualify. Luckily he found a new job after a year on COBRA.
I could go on for days with the anecdotes. Lets do one more! We were on a HD plan at the time. H needed non-emergency hernia surgery. We tried like you wouldn't believe to price shop or at least get pricing info up front so we could plan. We couldn't get the price. Literally- could.not.get.the.price. Dr. doesn't know. He says call office manager. She doesn't know. Says call insurance. Insurance says it depends what the dr. bills. Back to the dr. he says regardless of what he bills, it depends what the insurance pays. Round and round.
The idea that knowing the price will change how people consume healthcare is a nice goal to get to some day, but HSA's and HD plans have been around for about a decade IIRC, and it hasn't happened yet.
As it stands, unless the situation has stabilized, I don't know if both of us will retire when we can, financially. Its too risky right now, that is for sure. Our profession (engineering) isn't always kind to older folks, and if we quite at 50 and needed insurance at 60, I doubt we could get hired.
And plus also, I'm just a decent human being who thinks that everyone in this country should have a basic level of healthcare. Now if you want to talk Death Panels, I am all in (in other words, yes I am in favor of rationing health care based on age and likelihood of success).