The answer is certainly not the liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic party.
The existing policy is a compromise that liberals signed off on to improve the conditions of the worst off, but they were not able to create the kind of conceptually coherent total overhaul we would require to make the system rational.
I agree with you that blaming Obama for a failure of leadership in this situation is borderline absurd, but it's a simple narrative that is easy to regurgitate in a complex, frustrating world, so we have to forgive people for believing it, to some extent.
A one page bill could probably fix the whole thing
* move tax benefit of buying insurance from employer to employee (why is my company involved in my health insurance anyway?)
* allow buying of insurance across state lines
* require same price for all services, tests, medicines regardless of payer
* require those prices to be public
* declare a single 'pool' or market for insurance (just like federal employees have)
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.
if you really want to know the gory details of this process and healthcare in america read the excellent book by Steve brill:America's Bitter Pill.
and one more thing, you had insurance now but what happens in you lose your job or god forbid take a break for a few month to care for somebody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda...
He did try for the other problems, and there was a lot of opposition.
for a complex bill like that you cannot take one thing in isolation and complain you have to look at the context. Also, again, its congress not him. if you are gonna complain, complain about republicans that kept watering down the obamacare under bad faith negotiations (though eventually it passed without any red support).
To be fair, this was a worse problem prior to Obamacare. At least now we have the exchanges, and companies can't deny you coverage for preexisting conditions. I agree with what you're saying, and the current system certainly has big problems, I just don't think you can blame Obama for that.