Why do so many liberals still seem to think Obamacare is a success?

Precisely no one thinks Obamacare is a success. Anything that leaves millions still uninsured is not, by any reasonable accounting, a “success.” “Obamacare” isn’t what liberals called for in the first place. Some liberals see it for what it actually is: a handout to the insurance industry which was the only sort of healthcare reform the Obama administration could ever hope of getting past Republicans in Congress.

As it turns out, the handout system the insurance industry, and its bought-and-paid-for congressmen wanted hasn’t worked out the way they wanted, so now they’re attempting to paint it as a Great Liberal Catastrophe.

As various other answers note, what we now call “Obamacare” was, in fact, a conservative plan, back when the Heritage Foundation first proposed it. (How the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative Think Tank, Promoted the Individual Mandate)

Heritage can stamp its feet and whine all it wants now, but the centerpiece of what we got was an individual mandate for health insurance. This was supposed to be a band-aid on a broken system. When Heritage was first promoting it, back in the early 90’s, it was promised to be the better alternative to comprehensive, universal healthcare funded by taxes, or “socialized medicine” in the parlance of hair-on-fire conservatives.

What actual liberals wanted, what most of us still want, is single payer.

Original question on Quora:

Why do so many liberals still seem to think Obamacare is a success?