Yup. Imagine something as terrible as social security. It seems to many people, who've been trying to repeal it for many years that it can't possibly work at all. Or even worse the concept that other governments who have better mortality figures than the US have medical personnel on their salaries and somehow the cost to their GDP is much less than the US. This law is in fact complicated because we decided that rather than having the government directly run things, we'd have the government pay insurance companies to run things, and extract a profit from running things, and yet have the similar impact on citizens as if the government was running things. The healthcare market has not for a long time been an example of free market where people choose their doctors, especially as they are dieing and when they have insurance in order to make an informed decision about how to save money. Adam Smith's invisible hand has not worked in the context of our system to keep prices down for a long time. The law is a kludge, to fix some of the problems. But it is probably better than what it replaced.