You have to understand that the world is drastically different between Obama’s presidency and now.
You can’t flip a switch and make a nation of 346 million people be a social democracy. You have to slowly roll in changes.
Obama campaigned as a progressive and governed as a liberal. The world changing had nothing to do with it
EDIT: For instance, he ran on making abortion rights law, but once elected with a supermajority he switched gears and said it was not a high priority.
I was on it myself for 4 years. And thank god too, as I got into a nasty car accident when I had it.
There’s more to the ACA than the healthcare marketplaces. The law includes governing what healthcare plans must cover, prohibits canceling or refusing to cover thingsfor pre-existing conditions, requires health plans come with prescription coverage, and even demands health care plans spend a certain percentage of premium dollars paid on actual healthcare, essentially capping the profit margin of insurance companies.
The millions of people that got healthcare because of the marketplace / subsidies are a win, but there’s even more people who were able to get coverage because insurance companies could no longer deny them. Prior to the ACA, for instance, people with T1 diabetes were fucked if they ever had a stint of unemployment, as they would loose coverage, and then when finding a new job, if they didn’t do it fast enough, would have to wait 6 - 12 months before the new employer’s plan would cover things like insulin. People with cancer would get all cancer-related treatments denied because their employer decided to exclude cancer treatments in order to keep premiums low. The ACA put a stop to that.
The ACA was literally a right wing health care plan proposed by the heritage foundation, a conservative think tank.
EDIT: Not to say it didn’t help people, I’ve also benefited from it, but it’s not exactly progressive
EDIT 2: This is not my opinion, Obama said it himself. Here is a source:
