You might be surprised. In the case of the ACA I do not know--not something I play in at all--but there are plenty of situations of poor, sloppy wording that get through and THEN people start pontificating what it meant all along--when the reality is, no it wasn't. I worked with a senior Stare official on a rather simple, straight-forward paragraph. It was added to the legislation just as he wrote the final version. We made sure it was unambiguous, direct, and clear.
AFTER it was passed, a certain Senator who was 100% NOT involved in that paragraph (1) took credit for it, and (2) said it meant something very contrary to the actual meaning, and the senator's interpretation in no way followed from the words in the legislation. Almost the exact opposite in fact.
If you haven't seen them at work, some congressmen can be astoundingly creatively stupid.