Hi, glad you're enjoying the game!
I don't think it will be possible to push the NPCs aside or phase through them, at least I don't know of any way to do it in RPG Maker so it would only happen to them and not walls/furniture, I'll look around but I doubt it's doable.
I think it should be possible to make the bars have a higher contrast, I didn't even realise it was an issue. Some people reported that they sat there waiting for the whole bar to fill up but it didn't click with me why that could be the case until now. I was just using the default colour setting. Are there any colours in particular that would be better? Or the actual contrast is more significant?