Story highlights Tom Miller: The debate over whether to scrap Obamacare is not yet over

Congress and Trump administration cannot afford to walk away from the issue without being able to claim victory, Miller says

Tom Miller is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of "Why Obamacare Is Wrong for America." The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) The question of whether Republicans should repeal Obamacare appears settled. Vice President-elect Mike Pence was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to rally his party's lawmakers. Later in the day, the Senate voted 51-48 to begin debate on a budget resolution that would help pave the way for repeal of President Obama's signature policy.

But don't be fooled. The debate over whether to scrap the law is not yet over, and what appears to be merely a question of timing is about much more than that. As a result, Republicans will have to tread a careful path that balances a desire to abandon Obamacare as soon as possible with the need to respect the reality that the complexities of changing the system will persist well beyond any near-term bill signing ceremonies.

Tom Miller

Of course, now that the end of Obamacare appears in sight, with the election of a Republican president and the party's control of the Senate and the House, a chorus of voices is urging delay and caution. And it's true that widespread, sudden disruption of existing health insurance arrangements could short-circuit a workable transition to more market-oriented and less Washington-centric health policy reforms. Hastily concocted political experiments on tens of millions of Americans could deliver unintended consequences.

Meanwhile, procedural and budgetary landmines on Capitol Hill also require careful planning, while holding together narrow working majorities -- particularly in the Senate -- as the Affordable Care Act is overturned will involve multiple compromises. Members must swallow hard and pull back from past rhetorical posturing.

But the reality is that such hurdles are by no means unique to Obamacare; they exist whenever any major changes in direction for complex national legislation are proposed. Even the Obama administration and its allies had to drastically revise the plans it envisioned in January 2009 and accept whatever it could get through Congress 15 months later (it then spent another six years trying to revise a deeply flawed law through often desperate means).

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