Health Care Repeal Is DOA For Now; Will It Affect What’s Next (Video & Polls)

The most important point to make about the failure of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) on Friday afternoon is that it’s not the final word on the Trump presidency—much as some in the media might hope that it is.

Yes, The New York Times called the bill’s failure a “humiliating defeat” for the administration, and yes, The Washington Post labeled it “a big embarrassment,” and yes, Politico dubbed it a “staggering setback.”  Without a doubt, many pundits will be clucking, chortling, and end-zone dancing for days and weeks to come.

A week of high drama in Washington reached a stunning climax on Friday: President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) decided to pull the Republican bill that had sought to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act rather than watch it go down to certain defeat.

There will be no second attempt anytime soon. Ryan said at a Capitol Hill news conference on Friday afternoon that the nation will “be living with ObamaCare for the foreseeable future.”

Donald Trump campaigned to repeal and replace Obamacare in his first 100 days in the White House. He boasted of wielding a businessman’s negotiating skills alongside a determined GOP commitment to upend the old ways of Washington with conservative governance.

But on Friday, his 64th day as president, Trump swallowed his first legislative defeat, after House Republicans balked at passing a health care measure they came to view as flawed and too politically radioactive to embrace before next year’s midterm elections.

To a man and woman, nearly every one of the 237 Republicans elected to the House last November made the same promise to voters: Give us control of Congress and the White House, and we will repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

On Friday, those lawmakers abandoned that effort, conceding that the Republican Party’s core campaign pledge of the last seven years will go unfulfilled. “I will not sugarcoat this: This is a disappointing day for us,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a press conference after he informed Republicans that he was ditching the American Health Care Act.

President Donald Trump suffered a stunning political setback on Friday in a Congress controlled by his own party when Republican leaders pulled legislation to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system, a major 2016 election campaign promise of the president and his allies.

House of Representatives leaders yanked the bill after a rebellion by Republican moderates and the party’s most conservative lawmakers left them short of votes, ensuring that Trump’s first major legislative initiative since taking office on Jan. 20 ended in failure. Democrats were unified against it.