Tell me, does the ACA save and improve lives of the average person: yes or no?

The ACA is an excellent example because it’s the Dems operating at the peak of their faux-progressivism. It did help some people in an immediate sense because it had some useful concessions in it, but its basic function of being state-mandated private healthcare entrenched the power of private interests, allowing them to fight all the better against advocates of universal healthcare, while conservatives can accuse anyone wanting something better of trying to roll back the marginal improvements that the ACA’s concessions brought (and they have been doing this, in case you haven’t followed the last few Dem primaries).