New York Post columnist Seth Mandel says that Republicans should admit that Obamacare is here to stay and push for incremental reforms of the health-care system rather than its repeal. Among his examples of worthwhile reforms are capping medical-malpractice awards, work requirements on Medicaid recipients, and letting insurers sell policies for the individual market across state lines.

None of these policies, it seems to me, should be high on conservatives’ list of priorities. Robert Rector has explained why work requirements for Medicaid are likely to prove impossible to implement. The rules governing medical malpractice should be left under the control of states, not usurped by the federal government. Interstate purchase isn’t going to achieve much, given that health insurance is tied to local networks of medical providers and that the federal government now extensively regulates benefit levels. If this is the sort of thing Republicans can still achieve on health care, then they are better off moving on to tax reform.

Still, Mandel’s advice is a thousand times better than what Republicans are hearing from points left, which is that they should shovel taxpayer money at insurance companies to shore up Obamacare.

All of this advice comes from overreacting to the failure of a deeply flawed bill. Republicans should, because they still can, do quite a bit to make it possible for nearly everyone to buy renewable, catastrophic health coverage and for them to choose between such plans and more extensive coverage on a level playing field. I think moving toward such a system is most accurately described as “repealing and replacing Obamacare,” and that using that description would be more politically advantageous than calling it something else, like “learning to live with Obamacare.” But the description of course matters less than the substance.