IT’S THE FRANCISCO FRANCO OF POLICY INITIATIVES: Obamacare Is Still Failing.

It’s worth remembering amid the brouhaha over the GOP’s tumultuous efforts to come up with a replacement: Obamacare still isn’t working. Many of its most valuable achievements are not sustainable. . . .

In any case, the thing that is slowly killing Obamacare, with or without Republican help, is the same thing that is making it so hard for the GOP to come up with an alternative: American health care costs too much. Solving this problem isn’t just about litigating the merits of Obamacare or Trumpcare; it’s about ensuring that the American people have access to the health care they want and need while keeping the country solvent.

We can’t do this all at once by some mighty government fiat—or, for that matter, through a blind faith in private markets. It took two generations for us to work ourselves into our present mess, and it will take time to work our way back to a sane and sustainable system.

America’s problem is that we have too many areas like this: Decades of gradual screwing-up by can-kicking politicians, with the bills now coming due in ways that can’t be fixed short of catastrophe.