The Obamacare experiment has left consumers with fewer health insurance options, narrower provider networks, and higher premiums.

United Healthcare and Aetna - two of the nation’s largest insurers - have withdrawn from most of the health exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.

Prior to the ACA, 18 carriers offered individual market coverage in Texas. That number will likely fall to 13 next year.

As a result of these and other problems, enrollment in the ACA exchanges is well short of projections. The Congressional Budget Office originally estimated that 21 million people would be enrolled this year. But the Administration reports the enrollment of only 11 million, as of the end of March. If the experience of the last two years holds, that figure will likely fall to about 10 million by year’s end.

Despite what proponents might suggest, there are no easy fixes for the ACA’s problems. That’s because its performance failures are the direct result of badly designed legislation, built upon the misguided philosophy that the way to improve the health care system was to subject it to even more regulation and government micro-management.

The way out of this mess is to start with a different philosophy: one that holds that patients and consumers - not the government, employers or medical providers - should be the ones given more control over the money spent on health insurance and medical care.

Read the full article by Nina Owcharenko about the Affordable Care Act from The Heritage Foundation