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The Obamacare repeal effort was already in unstable condition. Now its status must be downgraded to critical — and completely unserious. After years of Republican yammering about the urgent need to repeal the Affordable Care Act and months of fruitless pursuit of an alternative, President Trump now says he may not unveil a replacement this year at all. And from Capitol Hill comes new word that Republicans aren’t even talking about a plan. (Dana Milbank, 2/8)

Republicans in Congress have been attacking Obamacare and vowing to repeal it for nearly seven years, and President Trump made “repeal and replace Obamacare” a central promise of his winning campaign. Now the President and his party are in charge, but they are scrambling to craft a replacement. Why are they having such trouble? The main problem is that Republicans are a diverse bunch who opposed Obamacare for a variety of reasons. (Alice M. Rivlin, 2/9)

In the 2016 elections, conservative candidates sounded like progressives, promising they would reduce health insurance costs and expand choices for all Americans. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) filled the airwaves with the kind of personal health care stories that used to be heard only from progressives. As Congress begins to repeal the Affordable Care Act House Speaker Paul Ryan is promising an outcome where “no one is worse off” and President Donald Trump assures us that “we’re going to have insurance for everybody.” Can we dare hope that a new age of bipartisan cooperation is before us, and that both major parties agree that everyone in America should be guaranteed quality affordable health coverage? Tragically, what we are witnessing is not a new consensus on the right to health care but one of the most audacious bait-and-switches in American history. (Robert Kraig, 2/8)

If President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress succeed in repealing and replacing Obamacare, 20 million Americans will lose their health insurance — or so the conventional wisdom goes. Of course, predictions about Trump have tended to be wrong. This one is no different. In fact, repealing Obamacare and replacing it with the best the GOP has to offer will likely expand access to coverage, provide a wider choice of plans and drive down the cost of insurance. On top of that, it will strengthen the incentive for healthy people to get insured. (Sally C. Pipes, 2/8)

Republicans know they’ve benefited from voter confusion on this issue. It’s why Donald Trump’s health care policy could literally be to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific.” They also know that begins to end as soon as they release a real plan, and it really ends if they pass something into law. Which is why congressional Republicans are in disarray over their replacement strategy, Trump has begun making impossible promises about what will come next, and even Medicaid’s most committed opponents are admitting that slashing it is harder than they thought. (Ezra Klein, 2/8)

The Kansas legislature has wisely rejected ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion year after year. As a result, policymakers have protected taxpayers and the truly vulnerable from costly enrollment overruns. But now, despite a rapidly shifting health care landscape, special interest groups are once again ramping up pressure on state lawmakers to expand ObamaCare to a new class of able-bodied, mostly childless adults. Thanks to the prudence of Governor Sam Brownback and legislative leaders, Kansas is now in a position to learn from the mistakes of other states that bought into Washington’s false promises of flexibility and “free money.” They’ve also created a welfare reform model for the nation that they should build on, not diminish. (Josh Archambault, 2/8)

Healthcare.gov enrollment came in well below what was anticipated last month. After running very slightly ahead of last year’s numbers in December, January brought the news that about 400,000 fewer people had enrolled on the federal exchanges than did so in 2016. Those are scary numbers, not so much for the absolute size of the decline -- it’s roughly 4 percent -- but because any backwards movement is very bad news for the exchanges. (Megan McArdle, 2/8)