The federal government spent $341 billion from 2014 through 2016 on subsidizing individual coverage so that people would buy it (Not counting the money spent on state and federal exchanges). All this spending managed to increase private coverage by just 1.7 million people, slightly less than half of the natural increase in the civilian labor force. That’s $200,000 per person. The feds could have saved money by closing the exchanges and giving people who qualified for subsidies a check for $50,000 for each of the three years. MORE