Americans want a functional health care system.

They don’t want to feel tied to a job, passing on professional and personal opportunities, because they can’t risk losing their employer-based insurance plan. When necessary, they want to be able to obtain individual insurance plans that won’t price them into the poorhouse.

Americans see as fundamentally fair the provision in the Affordable Care Act that prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to individuals who have pre-existing health conditions.

However, many younger Americans resent being forced to pay for health plans that exceed what they feel they need. Insurance companies warn their business models do not work if they are only insuring the older and sicker, with the younger and healthier allowed to hold off on buying insurance until health problems arise.

The majority of Americans recognize there must be some provision to provide access to health care for those whose incomes are too low to pay private insurance premiums. The idea of stripping 22 million people of health insurance, as recent Republican House and Senate plans proposed by cutting Medicaid and eliminating subsidy supports, proved unpopular with the public.

Most fundamentally, Americans don’t want to worry about how they are going to access health care if they get sick. They don’t want to live in fear that paying for the care of a sick family member will ruin them financially.

Most Western democracies turned to national health care systems to meet the health needs of their citizens, but polls show U.S. citizens remain leery of the government intruding in their health care (yet, ironically, Medicare for the aged is a popular government program) and fear the cost in federal spending. A recent Pew Research Center poll found only 33 percent favoring such a “single-payer” Medicare-care-for-all approach to health insurance.

In sum, what most Americans desire is for their elected representatives in Washington to work together and compromise. They want an approach to health care that maintains some of the protections and extension of coverage to millions that Democrats provided in passing “Obamacare,” but with Republican reforms to eliminate the bureaucratic entanglements and mandates that conservatives say are choking competition in the insurance markets and driving up costs.

Such a compromise could include provisions allowing greater flexibility in the design of insurance plans, permitting individuals to opt for barebones, catastrophic coverage if they see it better fitting their needs. It could provide, perhaps through state governments, reinsurance protections to reduce the risks that are now keeping insurance companies out of state exchanges. Reforms could remove disincentives to hiring full-time workers because of insurance coverage mandates.

Instead partisan politics, and not what is good for the American people, has ruled this debate from the start. After the election of President Obama in 2008, and in control of the House and Senate, Democrats used every procedural trick available to squeeze through the Affordable Care Act legislation without a single Republican vote.

Arguably, it was a reaction to Republican obstructionism. Yet it was a perilous move. Never before had a massive social program passed with such narrow, partisan support.

Republicans seized the political opportunity and for three consecutive elections picked up congressional seats by attacking Obamacare and its flaws. Rather than joining Democrats in making repairs, Republicans vowed to “repeal and replace.”

In control of the Senate, House and presidency, the Republicans have failed to do just that. A handful of Republican senators killed the party’s replacement bill that would have ended Medicaid coverage and subsidies for millions, leaving them without access to health care, while cutting the taxes on the rich that were imposed to pay for that expanded health insurance coverage.

The fundamental problem for Republicans is that a replacement plan that would satisfy moderates would alienate conservatives who want a largely free-market approach that slashes taxes, even if it means millions losing coverage.

It is possible to envision a Republican/Democrat compromise in the Senate, but the resulting legislation would have no chance in the House. There “Freedom Caucus” conservatives, representing hard-right gerrymandered districts, would have nothing to do with health legislation that has Democratic fingerprints.

Meanwhile, Trump threatens to, “Let Obamacare fail.” His administration could do so, in part by withholding subsidies to insurers, assistance used to lower deductibles for low-income consumers. Pushing a program toward failure, and adding to the suffering of millions of citizens in the process, is not the leadership Americans should expect from their president. And it’s certainly not the leadership necessary to solve the health care problem.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.