Exactly how the law will evolve over the next few years is impossible to say right now. The best-case scenario is that enrollment will continue to grow, with healthy people signing up in relatively greater numbers, so that the marketplaces become more attractive to insurers. Premiums could settle, maybe as soon as next year, if this year's increases represent the equivalent of a market correction ― basically, insurers making up for some early underpricing and setting premiums where they should have been all along.
The worst-case scenario is that insurers continue to flee and premiums continue to rise. The law's subsidies would probably prevent a true insurance “death spiral,” since they guarantee that lower-income people will continue to find coverage attractive, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where significant swaths of the country have just one insurance option, with premiums so high that most people ineligible for financial assistance decide it's not worth the money.
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