ObamaCare fixes and “saving face”?

Let’s start with the position that ObamaCare is a disaster in multiple ways, and in a perfect world Congress would repeal and replace (yes, with VoucherCare) and Obama would sign the bill before him.

But this won’t happen.  Are you kidding?  To imagine that Obama would sign a law repealing the legislation unofficially named after him is delusional. 

So I’m thinking through the question:  is there a “mend it, don’t end it” version of ObamaCare that would repair enough of the bill’s flaws for the GOP to be willing to put their name on it, but preserve enough core elements that the Democrats would be able to enact fixes and still “save face” by imagining that it’s only minor changes that surely would have been the product of a conference anyway?

The key problem that even the Democrats are recognizing are the discontinuities.  How could they be fixed? Dump the employer mandate.  Don’t cut off subsidies arbitrarily.  Dump the individual mandate (replace it with a penalty? — if you get sick without insurance, your deductible is $20,000, for instance).

Are there things that Republicans would change, under a “half a loaf is better than none” approach? (Trying to think this through more comprehensively is on the to-do list).   Because going for the full loaf repeatedly isn’t doing anything productive.