I think there is a good point here, though. By compromising early and relatively privately, it never became a real topic of conversation amongst normal every day Americans. Maybe if Obama had come out as a fire-breathing liberal supporting single payer ("Medicare for all!") and used his bully pulpit to make everybody hear about it, we could have had a better discussion. Sure, it might have kept the ACA from happening, but maybe in the long run it would have given us better results.