Because the Affordable Care Act is far from perfect, there are many fair-minded conservative criticisms of it, and a few plausible conservative ideas to either mold Obamacare into something different than it is today or phase in a comprehensive alternative and phase out those parts of the ACA that don’t fit into the new system.

Michael Strain, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has tendered such a plan. There is nothing immoral about it, and Congress wouldn’t necessarily be behaving immorally by adopting less generous federal health spending programs.

The challenge for conservatives, though, isn’t just to identify preferable health policy ends—it’s also to chart a path from here to there that doesn’t impose mass suffering on current beneficiaries. Conservatives have done neither, and for this reason their critics have described their health care posture in withering moral terms. Strain’s purpose in this Washington Post op-ed is to defend conservatives from those critics. He fails not because conservative health policy ideas are inherently immoral, but because he must gloss over the fact that the right’s current approach to implementing them is abominable.

As a political matter Obamacare probably can’t be repealed outright anymore. Any repeal bill would have to move in increments, and replace the ACA system with something that doesn’t dramatically reduce coverage. But Strain also notes that conservatives might “have their way with Obamacare” if “the Supreme Court deals it a death blow.”

Absent a viable alternative, which does not exist and isn’t in the offing, wishing for this outcome is morally dubious, and Strain’s counterclaim is unusually weak.