I appreciate the nuance of your argument. It's a good point in general, and I personally don't fit cleanly into any existing party.

That said, I think we can reasonably propose that most of the sound and fury over the ACA was political theater. Mitt Romney wasn't decried when he passed a nearly identical law in Massachussetts. In fact, the RNC chose Romney to run against Obama in 2012, so it clearly didn't hurt him much.

Ask yourself this: if John McCain had beaten Obama in 2008, and he proposed taking RomneyCare to the national level, do you think he would have drawn the same kind of criticism from republicans as Obama did?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is a republican problem. Democrats probably would have been furious with McCain if that had happened. They likely would have decried the lack of public option, and they would have called it a massive hand-out to private insurers. Democrats are not any better. They only supported the ACA because it was backed by their guy.

Obviously I'm speaking in blanket statements, and there will be individuals that this doesn't apply to. However, I'm pretty confident that these statements are true in the average case.

This kind of argument seems to ignore the idea of federalism and limits on federal power. Just because something might be a good idea for one state doesn't mean that it's a good idea (or constitutional) at a federal level.

This kind of concern trolling seems to ignore the idea of loosely coupled nation states which have already implemented a variety of superior health care systems. Costs less, their people are more healthy. What I like to call "existence proofs". Just because ACA is a terrible idea for one nation doesn't mean that sole implementing nation should then hide behind exceptionalism (NIH) or weird textualism legal constructs and pretend what meager progress has been made so far is in some way radical.

RomneyCare was not popular with the rest of the country's Republican party. Just because he had one thing on his record that would be contradictory to that of the current party does not mean all of his talking points are not valid.

Romney was spot on about Russia being a concern in the coming months and years.

Thank you for articulating how parent is arguing.

Well you know what they say, Democrats fall in love, and Republicans fall in line.