For seven years now, the mantra “repeal Obamacare” has been both a spasm of revanchist rage and a cynical ploy to keep a segment of the electorate motivated to vote for Republicans. It was also frequently deployed in the belief that the GOP would not be unexpectedly thrust into a position where their voters could expect them to make good on the promise.

But Donald Trump’s Republican Congress convened only three days ago, and members are already finding that eliminating Obamacare will be far messier, politically, than devising and implementing it was for Democrats.

As Republicans hurry to repeal the law, “they’re not even close to agreement about what comes next — or even when the repeal should take effect,” Politico reported late Wednesday. “Republicans are reckoning with the reality that dismantling a nearly seven-year-old law that reshaped a $3 trillion health sector and covers millions of Americans is more daunting than simply campaigning against it.”

Republicans got themselves into this mess at least in part because of a broad, conservative failure to treat Obamacare on its true terms rather than as an evil abstraction conjured by a political foe. In an important sense, there is no Obamacare anymore; there’s just the health care system Republicans are inheriting, and the one they will leave behind.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to fill a huge national health coverage gap in a minimally disruptive, integrated way. It was not designed to be a modular component that could be inserted and removed at will.

