Self-inflicted collapse chokes GOP effort to undo Obamacare
WASHINGTON — House Republicans passed roughly 60 bills over the past six years dismembering President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Other than minor tweaks, they knew the measures would go nowhere because the Democrat still lived in the White House.
With a bill that counted Friday, they choked. It was an epic, damaging, self-inflicted collapse that smothered the GOP effort.
“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” a flustered Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters after abruptly yanking the legislation off the House floor to avert a certain defeat. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to repeal this law.”
The measure would have erased much of Obama’s 2010 law, eliminating its unpopular requirement that people buy coverage, ending its Medicaid expansion and trimming federal assistance to people to help pay medical bills. It represented the culmination of seven years of unsuccessful GOP attempts to craft a replacement bill the party could rally behind — a unity that ended up eluding them.