Republicans are struggling to find the proper pitch for their attack on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “Repeal and replace” — the tried and true formulation — may be mutating into something mellower, albeit more vacuous. “Americans want the ACA repealed and repaired,” Republican strategist Frank Luntz recently told the Associated Press, using the new nomenclature.

Should this right-wing retreat — or rather, recalibration — be construed as a victory, however minor? Probably not, for two reasons.

First, whatever the tweak in marketing, the crux of the matter hasn’t changed: Republicans seem poised to engineer an enormous increase in uninsurance in the coming years (at the cost of countless lives).