Remember when Obama was elected?
Businesses were complaining ever more strongly about double digit percentage increases in health care insurance costs for their employees. Saying, 'we can't stay in business, compete, if this keeps up.'
The Affordable Care Act was not proposed as some "left", "socialist" initiative. Mainstream America as a whole -- including the "conservative" side, business, etc. -- was clamoring for some sort of effective control on health care costs.
Then, the Republicans made it a political issues. They "lost", and they weren't having any. All their rhetoric and obstruction, not of a "liberal", spendthrift proposal, but of a middle of the road plan that would provide, per their worry, a perceived "win" to the "other side."
Once the ACA was passed -- in its further compromised form -- they did their best to kill it via the budget process / spending, which is a separate activity under control of the legislature (House and Senate). Facets written into the law, such as adjustments to control insurance losses during an initial, transitory period (the demographics and so costs of the newly enrolled not being known in advance), simply were not funded.
That America doesn't have fair, cost-effective, productivity enhancing health care, is a function of political self-interest. And, in a Democracy, said politics are tied back to the electorate, however imperfectly.
Republicans lied about health insurance. People bought the lie. Now we are living it -- ever more.
P.S. Not to mention, blocking actual cost-controlling measures at every chance.
By the way, for all the complaint by insurers about their "losing money" on the ACA, as I understand it, they've seen significant savings due to the ACA in their traditional, employer group plans. Are those mentioned and factored into the rhetoric about the ACA?
Health care in the U.S. is indeed in crisis. At this point, it comes down to a simple trope: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
The ACA bashing pols are simply part of the problem. Witness their inability to offer up an alternative of any substance.
P.P.S. In other words, I don't give a flying f-ck whether you are "left" or "right". You make progress towards solving the problem, or you don't.
And, I see it both as a economic and structural problem, and as a moral problem. A "moral" Right that is content to leave its fellow citizens suffering when resources and remedy are at hand (and this country can certainly afford them, in the dollar amounts estimated, if it makes the decision to), is not moral. It is merely hypocritical -- at best. I might contemplate using the word "evil".