When it comes to the health care reform law, Republican Party leaders couldn't be clearer on what they want: Its repeal. The GOP 2016 platform adopted last month at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland doesn't mince words about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“Any honest agenda for improving health care must start with repeal of the dishonestly named Affordable Care Act of 2010: Obamacare. It weighs like the dead hand of the past upon American medicine,” the platform says.

To be sure, there are big problems with the ACA, not the least of which is far fewer people than expected have enrolled in public insurance exchanges, while several major insurers, hit by big losses, are significantly reducing the number of exchanges in which they will do business next year.

Those problems and others must be addressed by regulators and legislators. For example, it has become clear that one of the reasons exchange insurers are losing money is adverse selection as individuals put off enrollment until they have medical problems. That type of abuse has to stop.

Lawmakers also must repeal the law's “Cadillac” tax, a popular reference to the ACA's provision that, starting in 2020, imposes a 40% federal excise tax on health care premiums that exceed $10,200 for single coverage and $27,500 for family coverage.

The theory is that the tax would raise billions in new federal revenue as employers who cut benefits to avoid the tax would raise employees' taxable wages so they could better afford to pay for uncovered health expenses. But there is no evidence to back that theory.

Further, the excise tax is likely to place a heavier and unfair burden on employers in parts of the United States with the highest health care costs.

That said, the health care reform law's accomplishments are significant. It has slashed the nation's uninsured rate with its federal premium subsidies for lower-income people to get coverage in exchanges, subsidies for states that agree to ease eligibility requirements for Medicaid and the requirement that employers extend coverage to employees' adult children up to age 26.

We hope legislators and the next U.S. president keep the ACA's successes and problems in mind as they work to improve, not repeal, the law.