xkcd

He wasn’t perfect, sure.

He wasn't good.

Obama was 32 when universal healthcare blew up pretty spectacularly in Clinton’s first year in office.

The Clintons weren't advancing universal health care in '93. They advocated a network of regional private plans that would compete for membership under a single regulatory framework. They flatly rejected universal Medicaid expansion. Far from threatening private industry, it was designed as a means of guaranteeing poorer regional networks could thrive with state support (much in the same way Medicare Plan C and the privatized Veterans Care and the privatization of the USPS ultimately are just kick backs to local business owners).

One of the better aspects of the Obama plan was to simply up the qualified enrollment numbers of Medicaid. This was the only part of ACA that really worked. And it was only shoe-horned in to contain costs, as subsidized memberships in private plans had enormous administrative overhead that was normally covered by employers.

But, again, efforts to simply open up Medicaid enrollment to the general population was killed from within the Democratic Party. Even as written, the bill allowed individual states to block Medicaid expansion piecemeal. The private insurance industry had to be protected, both under Hillary's plan and under Obama's.

Could Obama have passed Medicare for all instead, or would we have just seen a repeat of Clinton’s failure?

If Obama and Clinton had supported Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee for CT Senate, back when he won the primary in 2006, their odds certainly would have been better. But Obama and Clinton and their good friend Joe Lieberman had no intention of passing Medicare for All, because they were all - quite literally - heavily invested in the well being of the insurance industry.