I was curious about who did vote for the bill so I took a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Legislative_history ht

I was curious about who did vote for the bill so I took a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Legislative_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda... The bill passed in the Senate by 60-39 with all republicans voting against except for Jim Bunning who did not vote. With 58 Democrat and 2 Independent votes the Republicans weren't able to filibuster. After the bill passed the senate a special election to replace Ted Kennedy in the senate was won by a Republican, so the Democrats no longer had a super majority in the Senate, and so the decision was made that the house should pass the Senates bill as they didn't think voting on a house bill would pass the senate now that the Republicans had 41 votes which was enough to filibuster. > The existing policy is a compromise that liberals signed off on to improve the conditions of the worst off The only compromises happened between members of the Democrat party, between moderates and progressives. > I agree with you that blaming Obama for a failure of leadership in this situation is borderline absurd I agree that there are likely a lot of compromises that happened behind the scenes that we didn't see, but there has to be some ownership of that bill by President Obama. It was his marquee bill at a time when some Democrats were urging him not to tackle it, he had a super majority in the senate and the house. He signed it into law, he set the agenda, I think it's fair to hold him accountable for the outcome, even if it's not exactly what he wanted, it's still what was passed and if he didn't like it they could have scrapped it to try again.