Then an easier law that even republicans would have supported is to have the government subsidize HDHPs and be done with it. Instead they needed 1200+ pages that the lawmakers didn't even read. Government wasn't after protecting the 'uninsured'-- they wanted to control an industry that makes up 5% of GDP.
Republicans supported the ACA until Obama did. It's based on their own blueprints from the 1990s fight and Massachusetts.
And if you're going to whine about the length of the bill, get it right. It's 906 pages with legislative formatting (huge margins, lots of other whitespace). The PDF is trivially googleable.
