Trump blames Democrats as major push to repeal Obamacare fails

By Robert Pear, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Jennifer Steinhauer and Thomas Kaplan, nytimes.com

House Republican leaders, facing a revolt among conservatives and moderates in their ranks, pulled legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act from consideration on the House floor Friday afternoon in a humiliating defeat for President Trump on the first legislative showdown of his presidency.

Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, rushed to the White House shortly after noon to tell Mr. Trump he did not have the votes for a repeal bill that had been promised for seven years — since the day President Barack Obama signed his landmark health care act into law.

Mr. Trump, in a telephone interview moments after the bill was pulled, blamed Democrats and predicted that they would seek a deal within a year, he asserted, after “Obamacare explodes” because of high premiums.

He expressed weariness with the fight.

“The best thing that could happen is exactly what happened — watch,” he said. “It’s enough already,” he added.

But the effort to win passage was hardly relentless. Vice President Mike Pence and Tom Price, the health secretary, rushed to Capitol Hill for a late appeal to House conservatives, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/politics/health-care-affordable-care-act.html?_r=0

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