They've had seven years.

The Republicans have had seven years to figure out an alternative to the ACA.

They've had time to run the numbers on different systems to support premiums, based on location, age, health care options available.

They've had time to explore other ways of providing healthcare to as many people as possible with insurance companies, health care providers, and medical professionals.

They've had time to research methods  that fund the medicaid system that kept costs down but still provided access to healthcare.

They've had time to work with Democrats on ideas that could have worked better than the current system, even single payer worked out with a consortium of insurance companies.

So what did they do?

They whined for seven years.

They had show votes to repeal the ACA dozens of times.

They promised they had something better.

The legislation they came up with bore all the careful design and logic of a college term paper written the night before it was due by a student who had skipped class the whole semester.  In other words, they never thought they'd have to come up with an actual alternative until the surprise election result in November.

Features anyone would be proud of:

Increase costs for the poor and decrease costs for the rich.

Increase insurance costs for people as they get older when they need insurance the most.

Take away preventive medicine coverage that reduces medical costs in the long run.

Take away addiction help from people in the midst  of an upsurge in addictive drug use.

Have a bunch of white guys sit around a table decide taking away maternity benefits for mothers was a good idea.

They had seven years, and that's what they came up with.

Well, they also provided an excellent photo for fundraising.  Fundraising for liberal causes.  The photograph, tweeted by the Vice President, shows a group of white men discussing taking away maternity benefits.  Photographs are said to be worth a thousand words.  In this case, a photograph is worth millions of dollars.

Vice President Pence and the Freedom Caucus discuss taking away maternity benefits.

A Republican Congressman from Florida, Rep. Tom Rooney, sort of summed up everything with this statement in the Atlantic.

I’ve been in this job eight years, and I’m wracking my brain to think of one thing our party has done that’s been something positive, that’s been something other than stopping something else from happening.  We need to start having victories as a party. And if we can’t, then it’s hard to justify why we should be back here.

Thank you for your honesty, Tom. I await the resignation letters of the 292 Republican congressmen and senators as well as the president and vice president. If I'm not home, you can just leave them in the mailbox.