B737 Captain reported refusing an aircraft with a TCAS unit that would not test during preflight and had a history of not functioning properly.

Narrative

Arrived at the airplane at Gate XX; ZZZ-ZZZ1. While doing our preflight flows and checks the First Officer (FO) said the TCAS would not test and we both had TCAS Fail Flags. I tried to test the TCAS and the same result occurred. In my preflight prep I had noticed that the TCAS system had been written up previously. I wrote it up in the ELB and we called Maintenance. Maintenance came out and they said they could not get the system to test at all. I told them it had been previously written up and they said yes it's got history on it. They asked me what I wanted done and I said let's fix it. They had to check if they had a part. A few mins passed and then on their radios I heard just MEL it. The line maintenance employee; that was in the flight deck responded on the radio; well the Captain wants it fixed. Maintenance then stated well we don't care what the Captain wants. Then the volume was turned down on their radios. With the chronic write ups (which was stated in the MEL write up in the ELB) and our leg was to ZZZ1 (high occurrence of TCAS events in any weather); and I've had multiple RA's and TA's; I made the decision to not operate this aircraft. I then I contracted Dispatch and talked with Maintenance Control and followed that with a conversation with the chief pilot.Another Aircraft was found (#xxxx) we did our preflight checks; boarded up and flew to ZZZ1. Side note on this leg (at Altitude) we got a TA from an aircraft descending.