When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, passed in 2010, it wasn't because anyone thought it was a particularly good idea. It was just the plan that was left after most of the parts that would make various interest groups mad got sanded off. It wasn't a good plan—it was just the plan that Congress could pass.
Obamacare was written and developed in the shadow of Hillarycare, the '90s-era Democratic plan to expand health coverage. The main knocks on Hillarycare were that it was too complicated and too disruptive. The plan, which never received a congressional floor vote, stalled after a series of articles, attack ads, and even a flow chart displayed on the floor of Congress turned public sentiment strongly against it. In the public imagination, Hillarycare was a confusing bureaucratic mess, not a salve for America's health care woes.
