Medicare and Medicaid could be sold as providing medical care to the poor and elderly. Even those who think it’s not the government’s role can see them as having some positive value, since they actually do as promised.
Obamacare was literally sold as providing birth control to a woman so sociable that she allegedly went through $3k a year in condoms and needed subsidized birth control to afford her intense hobby - a much tougher sell to any sensible person. While no reasonable person wants Sandra Fluke to reproduce, surely the guys lining up outside her door can chip in to pay their own recreational expenses. The social benefit from Obamacare, even ignoring the huge costs, is so trivial that no one cares. It’s a naked power grab, which makes the lack of any truthful justification a real problem.
A power grab, and as the good “doctor” has blurted out, a redistributive tax.