It does lead to some interesting counterfactuals to consider what the country may have looked like if Obama didn't spend all his change on the ACA, and instead focused solely on job creation. Let's not forget that the tea party grew out of a backlash to the ACA, although I'm not sure it wouldn't have still popped up if health wasn't the issue at hand. Maybe when the GOP repasses Obamacare and calls it something else things can begin to get back to a more normal power/opposition situation. I fear, however, that ideological purity on both sides (yes, liberals, you're horrible at this, too) has entrenched itself very deep.
Shit, if we're going to get that off-rails we might as well wonder what Hilary could have accomplished if she hadn't gone to the mattresses over Hilarycare in 1992. Here's the thing that blows my mind: The Clintons worked hard on Hilarycare after doing a stint on the board of directors at Walmart. Healthcare isn't as big a portion of the expenses for a corporation like Walmart because of the way they pretty much fuck everybody, but lack of healthcare certainly is. Offload healthcare onto the government and literally every business makes more money except insurance and pharmaceuticals. So why don't the other industry trade groups band together to kick the shit out of insurance and pharmaceuticals? No doubt because they're all making money on insurance and pharmaceuticals. Sony's biggest revenue generator? Insurance. It seems like a halfway clever trade segment could push socialized medicine from a business standpoint. I mean, Toyota bailed on Tennessee for Canada because they didn't incur healthcare expenses there (and the general standard of worker education was higher, but baby steps). You'd think Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and everybody else could say "we want the government to pay for insurance so we can be more competitive."