Speaking of waivers, I believe the law gives wide powers to the President to issue waivers, which Obama did for his union and corporate donor buddies.
There’s no application for exemption, they are just given at the discretion of the president. So Trump could in theory just exempt everyone from Obamacare and that would be the end of it.
No, it's not that easy.
Obamacare also imposed a lot of requirements on healthcare insurers, like minimum coverage requirements, elimination of the ceiling on benefits, the premium range (maximum of 3X from lowest to highest), and extending the age for adult children on the family policy. Worst of all, there's the elimination of the pre-existing condition exclusion.
All of those things resulted in higher premiums for most people, and the last one discourages people from buying health insurance before they need it.
Those provisions upended any underwriting standards, and we'll never get premiums back down to a reasonable amount without their elimination.