When it comes to universal healthcare, there is nowhere for Republicans to go unless they subscribe to in-your-face barbarism or a universal healthcare system even better than Obamacare.
The GOP has played all its cards and has none left except manifest reversion to the status quo ante which denied healthcare to tens of millions of Americans -- even those who wanted to buy insurance with their own money!
The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism
The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die.
The sooner the better.
Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right."
To allay this chthonic anxiety, they resort to Human Sacrifice, hoping that spilled blood will placate "the angry gods," including the one they've made of themselves. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html
Having poked their eyes out, they fail to see that self-generated wrath creates "the gods" who hold them thrall.
Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment.
Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold.
Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, Republicans might keep it around. "Three top Republicans told Bloomberg on Tuesday they are preparing a legislative response in case their party gets what it is wishing for: A Supreme Court ruling that would eviscerate a central tenet of President Barack Obama's health care law by declaring tax credits on the federal exchange illegal. While such a ruling would represent a political victory for Republicans who have contended that Obama's signature legislative initiative is an overreach, some party leaders acknowledge that the real-life consequences could make it a Pyrrhic one. Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Senate Republicans were 'close to a consensus' that would 'not leave 6 or 7 million Americans in the lurch' if they lose their insurance tax credits." Sahil Kapur for Bloomberg.
VINIK: Republicans still don't have a policy agenda beyond repealing Obamacare. "The Republican Party's one Big Idea remains the same: to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And that alone overshadows all of the ideas on the right—smart or dumb, reformist or conservative, realistic or pie-in-the-sky—for addressing income inequality and helping the middle class. ... While most GOP candidates are paying lip service to income inequality, there is almost no substance behind their rhetoric. Nowhere is this more notable than the Republican Party’s focus on repealing Obamacare. The Brookings Institute found that the health care law’s benefits accrue entirely to the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution... It's a victory, of sorts, for the left that Republicans even raise the problem of inequality—as opposed to denying its importance altogether—but that's substantively meaningless until the Republican presidential candidates deliver policies to reduce it." The New Republic.
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