The biggest problem is that Trump has absolutely zero leverage here.
Everyone hated the bill, AARP, the Koch brothers' group, Club for Growth, etc. all came out against it. Trump not giving two shits about the specifics made it impossible for him to mediate the process because nothing they threw in there was actually useful for the end goal. For every Freedom Caucus dumbass he won over by screwing over more people he lost another moderate (and the interest groups ramped up their opposition), and even then the Freedom Caucus realized they could get away with demanding more.
Dude's approval rating is barely treading above the 40s and has been negative almost the minute he walked in the door. When Obama started the process of legislating ACA (which he was involved in from the beginning which allowed him to deal with specific concerns while crafting the bill rather than have it all come to a head at a critical moment), his approvals were in the 60s. They were considerably lower by the time he passed it, but still better than Trump's and by that point they were far enough along (versions had already passed the House and Senate) that the downside of coming out empty handed might have been even worse.
No Congressman worth two fucks is going to die on Trump's hill. Obama had a movement behind him - one that wasn't very efficient at electing people downballot, but his leadership was important enough for Democrats to take tough votes. If ACA survives Trump's presidency and stabilizes he's easily a top 10 president.
Trump is an idiot who was elected by accident pushing a shitty bill that has a 17% approval rating. And now he's trying to pin this on the Democrats. "Yeah, you'll take the fall for stopping this bill that nobody liked and would have drastically reduced the quality of life for millions of people!" Gee, that'll learn us.
Like I don't know if they'll be able to regroup and come up with a repeal of ACA that works for everyone in the party or what, maybe this story still doesn't have a happy ending, but jesus Trump couldn't have fucked this up any harder.