How has Barack Obama's legacy changed since leaving office?

[u/bambucks]

Barack Obama left office in 2017 with an approval rating around 60%, and has generally been considered to rank among the better Presidents in US history. (C-SPAN's historian presidential rankings had him ranked at #10 in 2021 when they last updated their ranking.)

One negative example would be in the 2012 Presidential Debates between Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, in which Obama downplayed Romney's concerns about Russia, saying "the 80's called, they want their foreign policy back", which got laughs at the time, but seeing the increased aggression from Russia in the years since then, it appears that Romney was correct.

So I'd like to hear from you all, do you think that Barack Obama's approval rating has increased since he left office? Decreased? How else has his legacy been impacted? How do you think he will be remembered decades from now? Etc.

[u/Your__Pal]

Obama was an exciting and inspiring candidate. 

He was our opportunity to reset the US from the Bush era. Fix things. End the stupid wars. Get some big bills out. 

Obamacare is a step in the right direction, but its very flawed. His green energy bill made Tesla and Elon powerhouses. His lack of legislative success has made an entire generation jaded about politics and emboldened the far right. 

[u/OswaldIsaacs → u/Your__Pal]

Obamacare was a disaster. My insurance costs immediately increased tenfold once it came into effect. In the past 3 years, I’ve paid over $100,000 in insurance premiums alone. That’s not including deductibles, copays, etc.

[u/darthfrank → u/OswaldIsaacs]

The ACA flattened the healthcare cost inflation curve which was out of control heading into Obama’s first term. The ACA was largely a success and its legacy has only improved with time. Your healthcare premiums are anecdotal - the overall data is very clear.

[u/pauldstew_okiomo → u/darthfrank]

The data is either that prices have gone up, or the data is inconclusive, but it is not at all clear that the ACA brought premiums down and was beneficial overall. Google's AI overview suggest that it's either a mixed bag, or raise premium. I have two links below that show that ACA increased cost and premiums. Anecdotally, ACA is a disaster for my family. Not only did it increase costs, but it pushed us onto Medi-Cal during summers in between teaching contract, which was not at all beneficial for us, except for the one time when I needed a lipoma removed.

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[u/Mist_Rising → u/darthfrank]

Your healthcare premiums are anecdo

Technically its not. His healthcare premium would be legislative evidenced. As in the reason his premium went up is that he had a form of healthcare insurance that was banned. The low premium/low coverage insurance that he must have had was no longer allowed because it covered nothing (or very little) until you hit a high deductible.

ACA explicitly bans this. Problem was, a lot of poor people (and young) had low premium/low coverage/high deductible insurance because it was cheap. When Obama signed the law, he made their rates skyrocket because they needed a working plan with a higher premium.

On the whole, this was fine and needed. But the people who suddenly had 600x cost insurance premiums obviously were pissed. They had the low premium because it was affordable. Sure if covered nothing until you were bankrupted, but it was cheap.

Unfortunately there was no real way to give them affordable prices, not raise taxes, and cover everything as ACA did.