And it started as simply rebranded Romneycare (the 2006 MA state plan), so Rs should have found it palatable. And for the first half of Obama's first term, Ds could vote in anything they wanted but we still got a terrible version of a R health care plan.

FWIW, Nixoncare, totally blocked by Ted Kennedy because the dems didn't want Nixon's name on anything else that was nice (the Clean Air Act President kept claiming he'd end Johnson's war in Vietnam and then he had the gall to open relations with China!), was more like the single-payer health care Obama ran on but could not produce.

Also: Disclaimer, I'm absolutely not a conservative. I just don't like the liberal rewrites of actual history.