By the time Jindal could hypothetically take office, we will be in our 4th year of Obamacare. It will simply be too late to make any real changes to it.
Why? When Gingrich dismantled the AFDC it had been around for decades. I've been saying and I'll say again, if a Republican trifecta is elected at any point before the late 2020s, Obamacare is going to be knifed. Perhaps it'll survive, perhaps not, but the best case scenario for the act's proponents is it simply being severely shaken by the experience.
How? What are you going to repeal?
Get rid of the Exchanges altogether? No, people will have already used them 4 times to purchase insurance. You can't just take them away at this point.
Keep the Exchanges, but defund the subsidies? There's no way that would ever happen... after 4 years of paying low rates, you're just going to start making poor people pay the full rates, essentially giving them a huge rate increase? Good luck getting anyone to back that. And since Obamacare has been repeatedly shown to be deficit-neutral, you can't even use the "we can't pay for this!" excuse.
Return to the days of discriminatory pricing by allowing insurance companies to charge women more than they charge men, and allow them to deny people with pre-existing conditions altogether or charge them higher rates? Fat chance. After 4 years of equality, no one is going to want to return to the days of discrimination.
Get rid of the Medicaid expansion funding and make states pay for it themselves? You might could pass that, but there would be some extreme backlash to forcing millions of people off their insurance plans.
Get rid of the individual mandate? You might could pass that too, but expect major pushback from insurance companies, and people in general, since this would cause rates to skyrocket. After 4 years of it being in effect, I doubt this will be a "big deal" issue anyway.
Get rid of the corporate mandate? You could probably get that done already, since axing it would funnel more people to the Exchanges, if your side were willing to negotiate small tweaks to Obamacare without demanding huge concessions.
Get rid of the contraception mandate? You probably could, but expect major backlash after people have had free birth control pills for 4 years.
Get rid of risk corridors/reinsurance? Those programs expire in 2016, and no one seriously wants to ax them early anyway.
Get rid of requiring insurance companies to cover dependents until age 26? You can try, but I don't think there's enough real opposition to that anyway.
So what are you going to be able to by 2017 at the soonest? At best, you pass a few tweaks and try to rebrand it as a "repeal," which is essentially what Jindal is proposing.
I think you overestimate the political acumen of the GOP. Their last presidential and vice presidential nominee supported a budget that would make seniors eat cat food, I don't think they'd have any qualms about screwing over the millions who benefit from Obamacare. In fact, millions already HAVE been screwed over by the Republican governors who rejected Medicaid expansion.
