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Has battling to kill Obamacare lost cachet for Republican presidential candidates? Two leading GOP contenders strode into their party’s most vexing policy fight last week, offering blueprints to replace the 5-year-old health law. The response? A collective yawn. A week later, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio’s Obamacare alternatives have all but disappeared from the campaign trail conversation, eclipsed by new twists in Trump’s GOP-leading candidacy and the fight he picked over birthright citizenship. (Cheney, 8/24)

Just before Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal revealed his plan to replace ObamaCare last year, he sat down with 15 of Washington’s top conservative healthcare wonks to discuss it. They didn’t approve. “Near the end, they said, ‘You make a good point, but what you’ve put forward, we just don’t think it’s politically viable,’” Jindal’s long-time adviser Curt Anderson recalled in an interview this week. To his surprise, he said the group agreed the next GOP nominee couldn’t entirely roll back ObamaCare for fear of losing votes from millions already with coverage. In other words, even ObamaCare’s toughest critics say that parts of the law are here to stay. (Ferris, 8/24)