“Despite the Supreme Court’s repeated attempts to prop it up...”
Cruz was asked why Roberts supported changing the meaning of that phrase in the legislation. Cruz said he figured Roberts wanted to keep the Supreme Court out of politics. That is, Roberts believes if the law is to be changed, it is up to the Legislature to do it, not the Supreme Court.
Fine, but why then didn’t the Supreme Court say exactly that in their decision, letting the law stand as-is and passing the ball to the Legislature to make changes.
The principal authors of Obamacare wanted single payer, but didn't have the votes. Short of single payer, they wanted a federal option or a national exchange, but didn't have the votes. So they settled on state exchanges, with the states incentivized to participate "voluntarily." This is a common means of dragooning the states into federal programs, but it didn't work this time.
What the majority of the Court has now done is give the advocates of Obamacare the national exchange that they clearly lacked the votes to enact at the time.