People whose plans were discontinued still had coverage both before and after ACA. There's no guarantee that their ACA coverage is more expensive than their coverage was prior to ACA.
Also, ALL of the plans in force in the individual market prior to 1/1/2014 were nonconforming. Not all states required cancellations. Some allowed them, some disallowed them. And some went for a mixed approach with an "opt-out" provision whereby carriers could auto-enroll their existing members who were on nonconforming plans into ACA compliant plans; then if the member wished to retain their nonconforming plan they could call the carrier and change back.
In either case, the relationship between the price before and after ACA has nothing to do with whether the plan was cancelled. It has to do with the provisions in the ACA that changed the underlying actuarial value of the plan (what services are covered, and how rich that coverage is), as well as the compression of the age rating factors, the dissolution of the high-risk pools, and the entry of the uninsured into the individual market, and the transformation of a risk-underwritten market into a community rated market.
All of those things combined serve to increase the premium on average. Offsetting those factors, however, are several actions that carriers took that moderated the average impact, as well as subsidies. Negotiated rates with providers, narrower networks and exclusive hospital contracts, and a willingness to take risk in the first few years because of risk corridors and federal reinsurance all kept the premiums from risking as much as they otherwise would have.
That said, the impact of those rate changes are not uniform. They vary from state to state, because each state had a different regulatory environment prior to 2014. For some states, like WA, the shift to community rating was negligible because we were already almost completely community rated anyway. And the age compression was also not a big deal - we went from 3.5:1 to 3:1. For other states, like Alaska, it was a large effect. Their age scale was previously 6:1. In that case, older people found themselves better off than they were in 2013... but younger people saw their rated go up all else being equal.
Generally speaking, I'd guess that most everyone with FPL over 400% would see their rates go up - that's somewhere around 40% of the people in the Individual market. Under 400% it's much more difficult to pin down, as it's going to vary from state to state, as well as by age.
At the end of the day, however, it depends on several factors, including how comprehensive the product was that they had in 2013.
Whether that policy was cancelled is irrelevant to assessing whether their rates went up.
I'm not good at picking up sarcasm in text without clear contextual cues... so help a girl out. I really don't know how to read your post.
