I'll respond to both of your retorts.  First, YES, some Democrats are in bed with "big insurance," along with all of the Republicans. That's why we're the only industrialized nation in the world without a true form of Single-payer Healthcare. 

On mandates, young people and the elderly and infirm that rely on the ACA. First, the elderly are on Medicare, they paid into it all their lives and it's a payroll tax-paid benefit.  

Second, yes, young people have a mandate to buy health insurance.  Premiums, under the ACA, have increased at a more modest pace than at any time in the past forty years.  

You asked, "Would being born a women be a preexisting condition?"  Under Ted Cruz's insipid proposal, why yes. Many Republicans in Congress have gleefully gone on camera and stated that they could bring the price of health care way down for men, simply because they don't ever go through that expensive childbirth thing, ignoring their own whereabouts for the nine months preceding their birth.