Forget about replace.
Repeal alone would be the equivalent of demolishing a slum, as mentioned in an earlier post. But without anything else in place. Obamacare destroyed a lot of what already existed, and simple repeal isn’t going to bring it back.
And, hope springs eternal, ‘replace’ involves things like sale of insurance across state lines, it may well be better than what we had before.
The problem is that republicans can only knock out parts of Obamacare using reconciliation (51 votes) and they currently do not have 51 votes because of some moderate republican senators getting cold feet. They also need 60 votes to break the democrat filibuster to actually pass a comprehensive law that would work. Probably not a chance in hell of that happening on Obama’s signature law.
So, Republicans can repeal but can’t replace and the democrats will run into 2018 with the message that Trump destroyed healthcare for 15 million people. There will be ads of dying mothers, dying children with no coverage left dying on the streets.....
If you don’t think this would be politically damaging, you need to wake up. It would be. Probably enough to cost Republicans the house.
It’s in Trump’s and the Republican party’s interest to take their time and do this repeal and replace correctly. Trump has a point that the best thing they can do is maybe do nothing for a couple years and let Obamacare die a natural death on its own, which is going to happen regardless because the law is broken.