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At 3:30 p.m. congressional Democrats erupted into chants of “Vote! Vote! Vote!” as the Republican leadership called the House into recess. Minutes later the public learned that Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wisc.) had called off the vote on the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.
As early as Thursday evening it was becoming clear that the House leadership did not have the 216 Republican votes needed to pass the bill. The decision to pull the legislation came after a call between Ryan and Trump. Ryan recommended not holding the vote and Trump agreed.
“We came really close today, but we came up short,” Ryan said at a Friday afternoon press conference.
For patients, insurers and health care providers, the decision to kill the repeal and replace bill means that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, will remain the law of the land. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” according to Ryan.
As the dust settles over the weekend, it will become clearer whether the Republican leadership will try to take another shot at fulfilling their years-long promise of fixing the American healthcare system, but Paul Ryan’s message to the caucus was, “We’re going to move on with the rest of our agenda.”
President Trump has openly suggested the idea of leaving Obamacare in place and allowing it to collapse on its own as premiums rise and insurers pull out of the exchanges, something the president believes could happen in 2017. After Obamacare leaves the American healthcare system in rubble, the plan is to blame the fallout on Democrats. On Friday, after his bill failed to garner the needed support from Republicans, Trump was already pointing the blame at Democrats for not working with the GOP majority.
For days the White House insisted that after the American Health Care Act, there was no lan B. “This bill represents the best chance of repealing and replacing Obamacare,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier this week. “This is the only train leaving the station.”
Just hours before the vote, Trump was still holding the line that there would not be another shot at healthcare repeal. “This is it,” Spicer said. “This is your chance.”
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) was prepared to vote for the AHCA, but said that the Republican conference was “caught in a real vice” with more than one faction fighting different sides of the debate. “The only thing they shared in common was they were opposed and in sufficient numbers to tank it.”
After an all-out effort by the Trump administration and extensive work by the GOP leadership to incorporate the views of moderates, blue-state Republicans and far right conservatives, Womack said he is disappointed.
“Our leadership worked its tail off and we deserved a better fate in this case,” he stated. “No question this is a loss for leadership.”
The derailing of the health care bill is going to have an impact to the rest of the party’s legislative agenda, he continued, saying that issues that are on deck, including funding the government for the rest of the year, raising the debt and doing tax reform, “so much of it was hitched to our ability to get something like this [heath care bill] done.”
Despite the outcome, members on both sides of the aisle are not ready to call it quits, even though they may no longer have President Trump pushing the issue from the bully pulpit.
“We’re the legislative body the last time I looked, not the president,” said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) a vocal member of the Freedom Caucus who was prepared to vote against the health care bill. “This is still open. This is just one attempt.”
Alabama Republican Bradley Byrne was emphatic that just because the first attempt to pass a new health law failed, it won’t be the last. “It is not going away,” he told reporters. “At some point we’re gonna have to come back to it. Whether we do it incrementally, whether we do it in a grand bill, I mean, I don’t think you can say.”
The chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the first panel to review a new health care law, also indicated that Friday’s result does not represent an end to to the debate. “I wish we could do a lot more than we are allowed to in this bill,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), adding that the outcome “doesn’t preclude us going forward” and doing additional work to bring down insurance costs and expand access to care.”
Afew hours before the vote he told Sinclair Broadcast Group, “I’m looking forward to getting this behind us and then continuing work to make the market work better and to help people in need.” It is unclear whether the decision by the House leadership to “move on” with the rest of their agenda will impact Walden’s calculus.
In the meantime, the House already had a legislative agenda queued up for next week, and it is more than likely the leadership will follow through on that schedule rather than going into round two of the health care debate freshly bruised.
“I think it’s a smart thing for us to move away from it now,” Byrne said. “Let’s get some rest, think about it some more, watch the developments as these Obamacare exchanges fail across the country and ask our Democratic friends what are you willing to do to fix this?”
According to Democrats, they are ready and eager to rework the Affordable Care Act with Republicans, who they argue made no attempt to include them in the crafting of the American Health Care Act.
Rep. Jim Langevin, a Democrat from Rhode Island emphasized that contrary to the White House’s earlier pronouncements, there is in fact a Plan B, namely for Republicans to come back to the drawing board and include Democrats in crafting a better health bill.
“It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game,” he said, encouraging Republicans to work with Democrats to improve Obamacare, rather than scrapping it altogether. “We all know the Affordable Care Act is not perfect, there are a number of things that can be improved.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that Democrats would gladly work with President Trump to make the current health care system better. “If he is a deal-maker, when you start to make a deal and it falls apart and you still want to accomplish he objective, you go back to the table and both sides give and take,” Hoyer urged. “That’s what the president ought to do.”
To a large extent, the American Health Care Act tanked because of the coordinated opposition of the House Freedom Caucus, led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). After meeting with Speaker Ryan, none of the leading members of the caucus were willing to speak to the press, hustling past reporters repeating, “No comment. No comment.”
One Freedom Caucus member, Louis Gohmert (R-Tex.) argued the health care bill failed because the bill was “written in secret” and the GOP leadership then tried to “jam it through” over members’ opposition.
“They’re promised every time, next time we’ll do it right, we’ll get your input before the bill is written,” Gohmert said. “I hope and pray this time the lesson will actually be learned.”
From his standpoint, Congress is not even close to being done with healthcare, though he said he wouldn’t be surprised if President Trump tries to steer clear of the issue. “As legislators it is a problem and we should pick it right back up do it the right way get everybody with a different interest in a room together and get a bill we can all vote for,” Gohmert added.
For the President who became famous for his book “The Art of the Deal,” there will be many people calling into question his negotiating ability after the collapse of the health bill. According to Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y), the Friday defeat is the “cold light of day coming forward to say politics is not the private sector.”
There is still a broad agenda the president and conservatives in Congress are seeking to accomplish beyond Trump’s first 100 days in office. “We have important issues,” Collins noted. “As [Trump] has said, we will simply move forward,”
