I don't recall now, but I have the impression that Obama went with the insurance company scheme to try to bring more Republicans on-board, as opposed to "Medicare for All".

No, it wasn't aimed at bringing Republicans on board. He went with the ACA scheme because he needed 60 votes. There weren't 60 votes in the Senate for MfA. Lieberman, Nelson, and Landrieu all would have voted against it. Sure, all the Republicans as well - but the ACA is based on private insurance because the Democrats never had more than 57 votes for Medicare for All.

As we've discussed before, they probably didn't even have anywhere close to 57. Most people who have private workplace insurance are happy with it. Most private workplace insurance plans provide broader coverage than Medicare. That makes it very expensive to replace everyone's private plans with a government single-payer plan unless you really squeeze the medical providers (which is how most other countries do it, and why states that have considered doing it on their own have failed).

So eliminating people's private plans and replacing it with Medicare was a political non-starter. Nothing to do with Republicans.

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