Thanks for the stats. Agree with you on the ACA, as I am a Medicare for all guy. I have to presume that some of what pushed the democrats to pass the ACA was a "foot in the door" sense. Get something passed while we can, and reform it later, if necessary. National health care has been a liberal dream since the 1940s. It worked, as the GOP now wants to replace Obamacare, evidence that they now accept that the government has a responsibility in this area. For this, the Iran agreement and the Paris climate accord, I believe that historians will say that Obama was a transformative president like FDR and LBJ, for better or worse. What he did might be modified, but not be undone. I would have preferred the prez to do a series of talks on how we could phase Medicare in over a period of time, starting with, say, everyone over 60 for a few years, then gradually lowering the age. There are probably some serious flaws in this, but as I have mentioned here before, we already had several forms of national insurance from pure socialism (the VA) to partial socialism (Medicare and Medicaid). He could have noted this and said why not everyone?, and mention how health care works in other countries with better outcomes, tho it would have made some folks apoplectic if he suggested that we can learn from others. It still would have been a useful civic exercise. But, on balance, he moved the needle dramatically.
