How the insurance market works is pretty easy to understand.

Why it works that way is, too.

I mean, apparently not. Pet shop guy doesn't seem to understand how it works. He's an older gentleman, and is already on expensive medications. For him to get "affordable" health care, it means that a sizable amount of the cost of his health care has to be picked up by other people. He's upset that he's being charged something close to what it actually costs to provide him health care...but he's not the "sucker" he imagines himself to be. He isn't the one paying for someone else's care - his costs were picked up by other people.

Until recently, that was picked up by having younger healthier people buy policies using subsidies. The policies cost vastly more than the expected health care costs of the younger folks. But now that the subsidies have been slashed and they'll have to bear those high costs themselves, they're not signing up. Which is understandable. After all, pet shop guy didn't bother to get insurance when he was younger and (presumably) healthier, as noted in the other article.

That's how any such system will have to work. You'll have to get younger healthier people to pay more into the system to cover the costs of the older sicker people. You can't do it just by getting more money from the wealthy - there simply isn't enough money there. We'll have to get it from the healthy, not the wealthy.