"The Affordable Care Act chose to build around it rather than abolish it."
That's a awful lot of sugarcoating... it didn't build around it, it built a pedestal for it to sit on and a cage around it to protect and reinforce it.
Insurers are laughing all the way to the bank. It's legally required that you pay enough for healthcare to not only support the medical industry but the insurance industry as well, and nothing will fix it without addressing that double cost.
None of it should come as any surprise. The state entrenching the profit interests of corporations while pushing a sophistic narrative through media channels to the public is the name of the game for neoliberalism.