One of the main justifications for the GOP’s attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is the claim that the healthcare system is on the verge of “imploding.”

I’ve been clear both on my show and in these columns that the ACA has many problems, mainly having to do with the fact that it preserves the immoral status quo of private, for-profit insurance.

However, according to the Trump administration's own data, it's just not true that ACA is imploding and desperately needs to be repealed immediately.

Yes, the ACA needs to be fixed as a symptom of the broader problem we have in our country with healthcare, but this widespread idea that Obamacare is facing an imminent death spiral is baseless.

We now have 2016 Obamacare data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services that’s now overseen by the Trump administration. The data shows that, despite the hysteria, marketplaces were quite stable in 2016.

Conservatives like to tell horror stories about a single mom with 22 kids who works at Burger King and has 12 pre-existing conditions driving up the cost of marketplace plans. But, in total, the CMS data shows a steady mix of healthy and sick people buying insurance in the marketplace in 2016, similar to 2015, and definitely not the death spiral the right claims.

Premiums continued trickling up in total in 2016, but recall that premiums have been going up for a long time inside and outside of Obamacare exchanges.

Again, this isn’t to say that the CMS data doesn’t reveal legitimate issues with the healthcare system in it’s current form. Some people make too much to get subsidies or marketplace plans, but still can't afford private insurance. Other’s still haven't enrolled anywhere because healthcare simply remains too expensive.

But this is the Trump administration's own data that rejects the notion that there's a cliff coming right around the corner for Obamacare.

What’s concerning is that some Republicans may try to intentionally cause the implosion of the healthcare system in its current form by starving Obamacare of funding in an effort to pass at least a repeal bill. That is, if it won’t die on its own, they’ll kill it themselves.

That what amount to intentionally depriving people of their ability to get potentially life saving healthcare for political capital - a move so cynical, so insidious, so depraved that it may even be beneath the majority of Republicans to try to pull off.

What we know for sure right now is that these obituaries for Obamacare appear to be premature, and any attempt to move right on healthcare at this point should rightfully be viewed as an extreme position