Republicans are talking up their potential response in part because they’re nervous about what might happen if the Court rules against the administration in King. The fact that they’re anxious, and that the post-ruling politics are so unclear, shows just how big a hole they’ve dug for themselves: A Supreme Court ruling on a still-dysfunctional, consistently unpopular law that declares, essentially, that the administration’s implementation has been illegal should be an easy win for Republicans—or at the very least an opportunity to make a strong case for a different sort of reform to the system.

Obamacare is an exceedingly complex, poorly drafted law built atop the shaky superstructure of the existing, deeply fragmented American health system, with its separate tracks for individual, employer and government-run coverage. A better plan could sweep away much of the old mess and begin to unify the system: It would expand coverage and access to care by making it truly cheaper for everyone instead of increasing the cost and adding subsidies, and it would free American medicine from its current tangle of price controls, provider rules and patient regulations while reducing the government’s long-term fiscal problems in ways that don’t rely on uncertain savings from dubious technocratic payment systems. 

But Republicans can’t make the case for that plan because they’ve never figured out what it would look like. The GOP plan is always in development but never ready for final release.