Excellent comment. I’ve been saying for awhile now the first 2 years of Trump’s presidency when we held the House, the Senate, and the White House would have been a great time to keep the “repeal and replace Obamacare” promise. The repeal happened. The replacement with a cost-cutting free market alternative never did. The GOP missed an easy shot at persuading swing voters that they care about working people. I don’t think they ever had a plan. I think they just repealed Obamacare and hoped we would forget about the “replace” part of their campaign promises.
I think the problem is that a lot of Republicans know, deep down, that there is only one correct, but unpopular, answer as far as the federal government is concerned: Regulating health insurance and medical care is the business of state governments, not the federal government. Too many Republicans are too afraid to actually lead by taking an unpopular position.