I think they partly meant for this to happen but they did not count on two things. One was Cruz and Co actually having the guts to stand up to them and bring attention to the fact that the Republicans did not support this at all. The second is that the website would be such a mess. They wanted a bunch of people to go off insurance and on to Medicaid.
I don't think they knew that there were so many "regular" people on personal plans as opposed to "rich" people. They don't live in the same world as the rest of us.