Senate’s Proposal Was Doomed From The Start, But Missteps Along The Way Didn’t Help

The New York Times: How The Senate Health Care Bill Failed: G.O.P. Divisions And A Fed-Up President
President Trump was fed up with the grind of health care legislation, and at a dinner with Republican senators on Monday at the White House, he let them know it. He told the lawmakers how annoyed he was with one Republican who was not there, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who had gone on television over the weekend to oppose a Senate health care bill that once held the promise of victory for Mr. Trump. It is one thing to vote no, Mr. Trump told the group, according to one of the guests. It is another, the president said, to go on all of the Sunday shows and complain about it. The scene on Monday night was an exasperating end for Mr. Trump to a month of negotiations between the White House and Senate Republicans in an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legacy. (Steinhauer, Thrush and Pear, 7/18)

The Washington Post: ‘It’s An Insane Process’: How Trump And Republicans Failed On Their Health-Care Bill
Vice President Pence arrived at the National Governors Association summer meeting with one mission: to revive support for the flagging Republican plan to rewrite the nation’s health-care laws. He failed. Instead of rousing cheers on the waterfront in Providence, R.I., Pence was greeted with an icy air of skepticism Friday as he pitched the legislation, which would reduce federal Medicaid funding and phase out coverage in dozens of states. (Costa, Snell and Sullivan, 7/18)

The New York Times: The 3 Republican Women Who Doomed A Senate Repeal Of The Health Law
It was men who started it. It may be women who finished it. The Senate effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a process that began with 13 Republican men drafting a plan behind closed doors, collapsed Tuesday, as three Republicans said they would not support an ultimately futile attempt to simply roll back the current health care law without a replacement. (Huetteman, 7/18)

The Washington Post: Senate Republicans’ Effort To ‘Repeal And Replace’ Obamacare All But Collapses
Hours after GOP leaders abandoned a bill to overhaul the law known as Obamacare, their fallback plan — a proposal to repeal major parts of the law without replacing them — quickly collapsed. A trio of moderate Republicans quashed the idea, saying it would irresponsibly snatch insurance coverage from millions of Americans. “I did not come to Washington to hurt people,” tweeted Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who joined Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in opposing immediate repeal. (Eilperin, Sullivan and O'Keefe, 7/18)

Politico: New GOP Plan To Repeal Obamacare Meets Fatal Opposition
But McConnell said Tuesday evening that he would hold a vote to proceed to the bill "early next week," which would put senators on the record even if the vote's outcome was preordained. McConnell said the vote was "at the request of the president and vice president and after consulting with our members." (Kim, Haberkorn and Everett, 7/18)

Politico: Medicaid Shows Its Political Clout
Medicaid may be the next “third rail” in American politics. Resistance to cutting the health care program for the poor has emerged as a big stumbling block to Obamacare repeal, and Republicans touch it at their political peril. “If they’d gone ahead ... clearly I would think we’d be seeing a transfer of power in a year and a half,” said John Weaver, a GOP strategist for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has called the Medicaid overhaul proposals of his fellow Republicans “unacceptable.” (Pradhan, 7/19)

The Associated Press: Crumbling Health Bill Dents McConnell Image As Top Tactician
When the banner Republican effort to scuttle and rewrite President Barack Obama's health care law crumbled this week, the falling debris popped a hefty dent into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's image as a dauntless legislative tactician three chess moves ahead of everyone else. (7/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Why Obamacare Passed But The GOP Health Bill Failed
In 2010, Democrats passed a sweeping health-care bill that polls showed to be unpopular with no support from the other party. In 2017, Republicans sought to do the same. Each party touted the respective merits of its bills, but here is a look at some of the differences that meant one passed and the other stumbled. (Bendavid, 7/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Odd Position For The GOP: Working To Boost The Health Law, Not Kill It
Republicans could soon find themselves in a situation they didn’t expect: shoring up rather than dismantling the Affordable Care Act. With the demise of the Senate Republican health push, a growing number of lawmakers and governors from both parties say the urgent next step is to bolster the ACA insurance exchanges, which have suffered from rising premiums and fleeing insurers. (Armour, 7/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: Will Health Bill’s Collapse Force GOP To Work With Democrats?
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat and chief architect of the Affordable Care Act, offered Democratic help. Acknowledging that the law, commonly referred to as Obamacare, needs to be “updated,” she urged the Trump administration and the GOP Congress to stop threatening to withhold vital payments to insurers to cover high-cost patients and other actions that have destabilized some insurance markets. “We would have been working with them from day one,” Pelosi said in an interview Tuesday. “Call it something else, name the provision something else, save face, get yourself a victory, but protect the American people.” (Lochhead, 7/18)

The Washington Post: Affordable Care Act Remains Intact, But Consumers And Insurers Are Left With New Worries
The implosion of the Senate Republicans’ health-care ambitions leaves the Affordable Care Act intact for the moment — but immediately creates worrisome unpredictability for the 10 million Americans who buy health plans through the law’s insurance marketplaces. These consumers could face a rocky few months at the least, as the insurers on which they rely decide how to respond to the political chaos. Some companies could become more skittish about staying in the marketplaces for 2018, while others could try to ratchet up their prices depending on how events in Washington unfold. (Goldstein and Winfield Cunningham, 7/18)

The Washington Post: A Republican Party At War With Itself Hits The Wall On Health Care
By any measure, the collapse of the Senate health-care bill represents an epic failure for the Republican Party and a major embarrassment for President Trump. The crusade that animated — and bound — conservatives for seven years proved to be a mirage, an objective without a solution. Power comes with consequences. There is no way to spin to those who were promised that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed and replaced once Republicans held full power in Washington that what has happened is the fault of forces outside the party. This has been a GOP undertaking from start to finish. It is as though Republicans unknowingly set a trap and then walked into it without having prepared escape routes. (Balz, 7/18)

The Washington Post: Republicans’ Health-Care Split Goes All The Way To The Party’s Soul
At the heart of the failed Senate effort to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act were irreconcilable differences over the proper role of entitlements and how far the party should go to pursue its small government mantra. Both wings of the GOP revolted — senators who rejected steep cuts to Medicaid, a health program for low-income Americans, and others who felt the cuts were not deep enough. (Paletta, 7/18)