“..and single payer the ONLY option left that can pass to replace Obamacare. “
How do you figure? The GOPe in the Congress should just go back to work and do what they all promised us they would, and start with a full repeal of Obolacare. But I agree that the RINO wing has surely gotten busy early working to return the Republicans to the minority party as quickly as they can.
Because the universal entitlement has been established now for 7 years. It won’t go away, the government will not take its hands off healthcare, they’ve essentially already taken it over (which is why costs are what they are - a command payment structure, regardless of cost) through the rapidly collapsing health insurance industry. When the industry does collapse, single payer is the man left in the room. You won’t take the universal entitlement away, that is sudden political death, so you have to establish a means to manage the universal entitlement - and since you (government) are the only game in town, it merely becomes what flavor of structure is created to manage the universal entitlement.
This was all inevitable once Medicare and Medicaid became the dominant structures determining healthcare costs. We’ve been heading down this road for more than 50 years now, and we’ve passed all the turn-off points.