That is one way to deal with the problem, but it comes with its own tradeoffs. In particular that reversible type-a is incredibly fragile due to how thin the plastic supporting the pins needs to be to fit within the housing. They could make the plug bigger of course, but now you're adding more cost and decreasing the areas the plug can potentially be used in due to its increased size. Conductor routing also becomes more problematic as you need to cross conductors to opposite sides now. Additionally while that cuts down on conductors needed in the actual cable, you still end up needing 8 pins/conductors in the plug, one set of 4 on each side of the plug.