100% untrue. There were affordable catastrophic coverage plans available, and many were made illegal by the ACA and the requirement to provide boutique services for "free" (i.e., forced to pay for even if you don't use).
Not for anyone who needed them! If you were already sick, you would die poor without coverage. Are we really continuing to have this discussion?[1]
The market failed in this case. We all know it.
[1] Just to short circuit: you'll want to deflect to a non-economic discussion of whose "fault" it was that they were stuck with a pre-existing condition. But my point is: who cares? There was a product and a consumer which could not be exchanged at a reasonable price in an unregulated environment. And that's bad regardless of fault (doubly or triply so because it's a really important product).