Republicans think that threatening to shoot all the Obamacare hostages will bring Democrats around to helping Republicans clean up the mess they would make by repealing Obamacare. But there's good reason for Democrats to continue to resist—the actual part of "repealing" is looking more and more difficult for Republicans to pull off. One huge example—the vehicle Republicans will use to repeal the law has a major tax cut for the wealthy, and thus cuts out any revenue they would need to replace the law.
The large tax cut, which would go disproportionately to high earners, will seriously handcuff lawmakers as they try to cobble together a replacement plan to cover the millions of Americans dependent on Obamacare for health insurance, health care policy experts say. […]
“If all the taxes in the ACA are repealed as part of a reconciliation bill, that could be hugely consequential,” said Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “If you take all that revenue off the table, it means a replacement bill has to be very scaled back relative to the ACA or they have to find money from somewhere else to pay for it, both of which would involve difficult trade offs.”
And that means, as Greg Sargent astutely points out, any "replacement" plan Republicans come up with can't even come close to covering the same number of people as Obamacare, or do so as affordably. That's the bar a Republican replacement plan has to meet to get any Democratic support. It gives Democrats very real leverage to continue to tell McConnell to get fucked when he comes to them begging for their help.
Republicans have more than enough rope to hang themselves with this one. They could be calculating that, in the end, making even more uninsured people than there were before the law will be politically harmless for them since their callousness toward adult human lives hasn't hurt them much at the ballot box. Democrats have to be willing to let them find out.