The Democrats couldn't even get a majority of their own party on board to support a public option
What you mean is actually "The Democrats couldn't even get a majority on board to support a public option". If the senate was all Democrats, they could have passed it easily, but the Republicans wouldn't even come to the table. The whole health care concept even came out of a Republican think tank.
What ideas did the Republicans want again?
Obamacare is unfixable. It needs to be put down like a rabid dog and THEN we can evaluate what our options are after that.
The problem is people like you that are entirely inflexible. There are definitely flaws in ObamaCare - it's a huge bill - but most bills that size would have been updated and fixed a few times by congress. Unfortunately, there are some in congress that would rather not fix it, but just go back and start again.
It's been a few years now since ObamaCare's been passed, where are the better ideas? The only thing we've seen are minor things (e.g. malpractice reform) from Republicans that would do little to bring down costs and not insure more people.
Going back would likely cause insurance companies to raise rates again as they could use the excuse plus they wouldn't be restricted by how much money has to go towards health care any more.
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach