There will be no excuse of they screw him on this issue. This is an issue that should be in the conservative/patriot wheelhouse.
Please, God don't let Paul Ryan be the sponsor of this next piece of legislation...
What Trump should have done is used his influence to get the GOP in Congress to fully repeal Obamacare in reconciliation and replace it with the free market principles that have been missing in the healthcare market for decades. Most importantly that would involve the repeal of McCarron-Ferguson and the phasing out of the tax deduction for employer-provided insurance.
The latter is only politically feasible when coupled with the proposed cuts in personal income taxes. And the proposed cuts in personal income taxes are only feasible with such a phaseout. That is because the healthcare tax break would effectively be replaced by the lower tax rates, and the lost tax revenue from the lower rates would be replaced by the phaseout of the employer health insurance tax break.
That was the clear and obvious combination to bundle and put into reconciliation this spring. And Trump didn’t do it.