Parsing The Post Mortems: Is The GOP’s Health Bill Collapse A ‘Victory For The Truth’ Or A ‘Bipartisan Failure’?

The New York Times: The Health Care Collapse Is A Victory For The Truth
After Donald Trump won the presidency, many Americans despondently wondered whether facts mattered anymore. Trump, after all, won the presidency despite a constant stream of falsehoods. He launched his political career with a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace and just kept on lying, about almost every imaginable subject. He also admitted to being a sexual molester. He refused to release his tax returns, unlike every other modern nominee. And yet he was elected president of the United States. There was, and still is, ample reason for despondence. (David Leonhardt, 7/18)

Bloomberg: Congress Achieves Bipartisan Failure On Obamacare
For months, I’ve been watching in a sort of wonder as Republicans crafted the most unpopular major bill in living memory. Could they really mean to make a suicide charge at this --not some longstanding Republican goal, like dismantling the welfare state or slashing through the regulatory thicket, but pushing a sly parody of Obamacare even less likable than its awkward source material? When Republicans explained how this would actually be a strong campaign strategy for 2018, I had astonished flashbacks to Democrats saying the same thing in 2010 … and wondered when it was that people in Washington started believing their own press releases. Were we really due for the Republican version of the 2010 Democratic lemming run? (Megan McArdle, 7/18)

The Washington Post: Why Repeal-And-Replace Was Doomed From The Start
It wasn’t quite a wicked-witch-is-dead Munchkin happy dance, but the white noise of foregone conclusions drowned out Republicans’ relatively muted regret over their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. It was never gonna happen. Not no how. (Kathleen Parker, 7/18)

Bloomberg: Repeal And Replace Dies Again. So?
Repeal and replace is dead. Again. Perhaps for good this time. But perhaps not. Here's what matters now: Will Republicans in Congress hear a sustained, effective push from the White House to revive a viable bill? Will Republicans in Congress hear a sustained, effective push from Republican-aligned interest groups? Will Republicans in Congress hear from rank-and-file Republican constituents who are outraged that the promise they ran on for the last seven years may disappear without a vote? (Jonathan Bernstein, 7/18)

The Wall Street Journal: The Result Of GOP Failure
It’s no excuse for Republican ineptitude, but there is little market in America, and none in the GOP apparently, for coherent health-care policy, to the modest degree that such a description can even apply in Washington. Republicans, and arguably American voters, don’t want an individual mandate. They do want coverage of pre-existing conditions. (Holman W. Jenkins Jr., 7/18)

USA Today: The Obamacare Repeal Fiasco
Tellingly, the latest and perhaps last Republican strategy on health care is a measure that would repeal the Affordable Care Act in two years with no replacement in sight. So much for repeal-and-replace. Republicans did not have a viable alternative to the ACA when they staged their first repeal vote seven years ago. They don’t now, and in all probability would not in two years even if the repeal measure were to pass. (7/18)

The New York Times: The Trumpcare Bonfire
It will come as a huge relief to millions of Americans that Republican lawmakers have struck out in their attempts to destroy the Affordable Care Act — at least for now. But this ideological exercise in futility has already done great damage to the health care system. (7/18)

USA Today: What Killed Senate Health Care Bill? Liberal Medicaid Alarmism
The Senate health care bill is dead, and that’s at least in part due to overheated rhetoric from the left about Medicaid. Many of the over-the-top claims lacked important facts or context, and seemed primarily designed to scare people rather than prompt civil debate. (Chris Jacobs, 7/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Turns Out Governing Is Hard
At a meeting with GOP senators on Monday night, President Trump reportedly said that Republicans would look like “dopes” if they couldn’t pass a health-care bill. “If the Republicans have the House, the Senate and the presidency and they can’t pass this health-care bill, they are going to look weak,” Politico reports Mr. Trump said. “How can we not do this after promising it for years?” (William A. Galston, 7/18)

RealClear Health: The GOP’s Collision With Health Care Reality
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress find themselves in a position there never wanted to be in: heading into the August recess having failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and also without any significant legislative accomplishments since the November 2016 election. (James C. Capretts, 7/19)

USA Today: Obamacare Repeal Fever: Obvious Fixes, Or A Disastrous Mess?
With the Republican alternative to Obamacare dead, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as much a representative of the Republican establishment class as you will find in Washington, and President Donald Trump, leader of the populist rebellion, agreed that what Republicans needed to do is repeal the Affordable Care Act now and come up with some kind of alternative later. (David Mastio and Jill Lawrence, 7/19)

WBUR: Obamacare: What Doesn’t Kill It Makes It Stronger
As the nation considers the utter collapse of the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), advanced by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), some perspective is in order. Since President Donald Trump’s November 8th election, I have heard many people’s distress about the dire threats to the ACA that initially seemed so certain last November. (John McDonough, 7/18)

Axios: GOP May Not Be Punished If It Can't Pass Repeal
The GOP base will punish Republicans in upcoming elections if they fail to deliver on their promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or at least make an all -out effort to do so. That's the conventional wisdom, right? It was the political motivation behind Republican efforts to pass a widely unpopular repeal-and-replace plan, and then to consider a risky repeal-and-delay plan in the Senate. Except for one problem: When you look at the polling, the idea that the base will rise up and punish Republicans if they don't repeal the ACA appears to be exaggerated, and possibly even a political fiction. (Drew Altman, 7/19)

Chicago Tribune: Obamacare Wins Again As GOP Adds To Its List Of Stalled Legislation
Affter Republicans spectacularly failed to gather enough votes to repeal and replace Obamacare, President Donald Trump should consider changing his slogan from "Make America Great Again" to "Hey, we tried." And somewhere, I am so sure, former President Barack Obama is smiling. (7/18)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Yet Another GOP Health Care Bill Bites The Dust. Good
This week’s failure of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, version 5.0 of the Republican health care plan, can best be understood by reviewing two famous statements Donald Trump made about health care policy. Very early in his campaign for president, Trump promised that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed and replaced with “something terrific.” (7/18)