The ACA was a mess, and the experiment failed. Costs went up, way up. Certainly there were more people covered, but in one of the only analyses of multiple streams of information and not just a survey, Goldman Sachs came to the conclusion that there were 17 million people insured by 2015. But, of those 17 million, 11 million were gains from the expansion of medicare. 2 more million were from aging into medicare. 3 million were the ones who actually purchased insurance that didn't have it before.

I'm trying to process your argument first. Your article talks about health care costs rising.

Prices for medicine, doctor appointments and health insurance rose the most last month since 1984.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that ACA only dealt with the insurance part of it. The medicine costs and the doctor costs aren't regulated. Because of those rising costs, the insurance piece of it goes up.

In some ways, it may be because of the ACA that the costs went up. If more people have access to doctors, then more people went to the doctor and got medicine. If many of those people were sicker than anticipated, that might have driven up the costs of medicine and doctor's visits on an aggregate basis.

But then wouldn't that be a success for the ACA since those people are now going to the doctor when they wouldn't have? I'll grant you that I'm making up a scenario that neither of us can prove based on your data, but I don't think it can be shown that's not what happened either from this limited data.

Goldman Sachs came to the conclusion that there were 17 million people insured by 2015. But, of those 17 million, 11 million were gains from the expansion of medicare. 2 more million were from aging into medicare. 3 million were the ones who actually purchased insurance that didn't have it before.

I didn't look at your data because Forbes has a script I don't want to pass. But I did look up more data sets to see if I could find other data.

Here's some from Urban Institute. as reported in CNN Money:

Obamacare has made it easier for Americans to access health care when necessary. The share of adults who said they had to skip going to the doctor because of costs dropped by nearly 19% between 2013 and 2015, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.

Also, the Urban Institute issued a report Wednesday that found 4.4 million children could lose their coverage if Congress repeals but doesn't replace Obamacare. Some 88% of these children would be in families with working parents, and 54% would be white.

The number of uninsured parents would rise by 7.6 million, with nearly 86% of them in families with at least one person working part time or full time.

A total of nearly 30 million people would become uninsured if lawmakers repeal but don't replace Obamacare, according to Urban Institute. The repeal would do away with not only the individual exchanges, but also other provisions such as Medicaid expansion and letting children stay on their parents' health plan until age 26.

It's from an article from December 2016 in CNN Money.

According to the Urban Institue, 7.6 million parents could be uninsured, 4.4 million children and 30 million people total including the Medicaid expansion.

So how many people who had pre-existing conditions and couldn't get insurance before actually got it as a result of ACA?

I'm not sure how your question about how many people have pre-existing conditions is relevant. Whether someone couldn't get insurance before because of cost or because of pre-existing conditions doesn't make much of a difference. They're still not covered and couldn't get insurance if the ACA is repealed.

Interestingly, the proposed plan leaves pre-existing conditions, so the estimates of people who could lose coverage are those people who can't afford it, presumably.

Edit: Just saw this . In a video by CBS News, the Brookings Institution estimates 15 million may lose coverage under Trumpcare as proposed at this point on 3/10/17.