You're also now 10 years older. Health insurance pricing never goes down as you get older, only up. That $77 might have been $150-200+ for someone your age now 10 years ago.

Well it got rid of insurers denying coverage or charging more for pre-existing conditions, which is obviously the morally right thing to do, but is roughly like being able to buy fire insurance while your house is already half burned down. IMO the conclusion is just that insurance is a bad model for healthcare coverage.

Which is why it had the individual mandate to prevent people from doing that.

Obamacare didn't make healthcare more expensive. It just distributed the cost differently.

Was $77 the entire price of the healthcare coverage? Or was that just the portion that you paid?

It was the entire portion, was not through an employer.

It sounds like you had the equivalent of “short term health insurance.” They might not have called it that back then, but it’s sold now under that name (with limitations on how long you can remain in the policy that were relaxed recently) to remain ACA compliant. You can still buy these type of plans (at least in my state, North Carolina) for under $100/mo. There are lifetime maximums, exclusions for pre existing conditions, and high deductibles, but that’s probably the same as what you had pre-ACA as well.

These plans are typically referred to as “junk insurance” but if you can’t afford or just don’t want a more comprehensive plan they’re better than nothing.

It's not. I had a low deductible and a low yearly maximum out of pocket. They didnt deny me for a pre existing condition, my knees, and I had 2 knee surgeries while on the insurance and my low deductible and co-insurance meant I spent less the $3000 for both surgeries combined.