Since the healthcare insurance exchanges were launched on October 1, my office has received many calls about the Affordable Care Act. And there’s no way around it: people have been very frustrated by website problems at Healthcare.gov. (I count myself among them.)

But since improvements have been made, people have also contacted me with their success stories. One mother said she was able to get coverage for her 5-year-old son who has a heart condition — something she wouldn’t have been able to do before. A 65-year-old woman said she was in “seventh heaven” because she hadn’t had any insurance for the last 30 years.

One small-business owner said he couldn’t afford insurance until now. And one family said they are relieved and excited to sign up for a new plan that provides better coverage at a more affordable price than what they had before.

Do any of the problems these folks had sound familiar? Have you tried unsuccessfully to get insurance before, found costs out of your reach, or were worried that your coverage wouldn’t do enough if you or a family member got sick?

If so, I hope you look into what options are available to you by going to Healthcare.gov, calling 1-800-318-2596, or contacting a local group who can assist you (you can find them at www.enroll207.com). And don’t forget that you may qualify for subsidies to pay your premiums; a calculator is available at the Kaiser Family Foundation’s site, www.kff.org. The enrollment period goes until the end of March.

I don’t want to minimize the difficult experiences people have been having enrolling. There’s no excuse for the problems and, while I’m glad improvements have been made, we need to keep working to make it smoother for everyone.

But let’s try to put things in perspective. Remember what things were like before the Affordable Care Act? Insurance companies routinely denied people coverage because of such manageable conditions as anxiety or diabetes. They could drop you when you were sick. Some plans set lifetime limits on coverage, so you could suddenly find yourself without coverage when you needed it most. And companies had no limits on jacking up individual premiums more than 20 percent a year to pad profits or CEO bonuses.

They can’t do these things anymore, because of the Affordable Care Act. Whether you have purchased your own insurance or have coverage through your employer, insurance plans have improved in other ways. They cover preventive practices, like an annual physical and mammogram, at no cost to you. They have to cover mental health services if you need them. And at least 80 percent of premiums have to go directly to paying for healthcare services, not profit, administration, or marketing.

In addition to insurance reform there are other ways the Affordable Care Act is making a difference. It’s helped create community health centers across the country, which have served millions of Americans. It invested in training more doctors and nurses. And it has improved Medicare coverage while closing the prescription drug donut hole.

But the biggest problem the Affordable Care Act tackles is bringing down the number of uninsured Americans. The lack of coverage is not just terrible for these families, but contributes to rising healthcare costs for everyone else when these folks have to go to the emergency room to get medical care. It’s not sustainable or productive for the country to have such a large population of people who can’t get the care they need. And it just isn’t right.

The Affordable Care Act is our best hope right now to address this terrible problem. Soon after it passed in 2010, parents were able to keep children on their plans until age 26. The healthcare exchanges launched this year offer subsidies for people who have to buy insurance on the individual market. And Medicaid expanded to cover more people, nearly 5 million people across the country have been added so far.

You’ve probably heard that Maine has opted not to expand Medicaid, and that bills passed by the State Legislature to do so have been vetoed. Nearly 70,000 Mainers who can’t afford health insurance right now could benefit. It’s heartbreaking that we are leaving these folks with no place to turn when we could cover them at very little cost to the state.

The Affordable Care Act isn’t a perfect solution, but it is an important step. For the mother who can now find coverage for her son and the small-business owner who can finally afford insurance, the law has made a difference. We can’t ignore the law’s challenges, but let’s not forget the stories of these folks either.