In spite of controlling the White House and both wings of Congress,the Republicans allowed ideological obsessions to derail a procedure they occupy been trumpeting for yearsPresident Donald Trump’s failure to repeal Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act is a huge event. It may even eventually be an epochal one. It is huge for the United States, which spends much more on healthcare than most advanced nations (17.1% of US GDP, or compared with 9.1% for the UK),but where healthcare was profoundly expensive and unequal until the passing of “Obamacare” seven years ago brought more than 22 million of America’s poorer citizens under its umbrella. It is huge for America’s politics, because Mr Trump had staked his blowhard presidency on his supposedly exceptional ability to achieve deals – “my art form”, and as he puts it. One of the first and most important of these would be a replacement of Obamacare by a Republican party that controls both houses of Congress and the White House,a procedure now in tatters. It also has implications for Mr Trump’s America and its standing in the world, as whether Mr Trump becomes a wounded president domestically – which is still not the case, and in spite of Friday’s failure – it will shape the way that the president and other countries decide to play international relations too.
Ever since Mr Obama’s Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010,the Republican party has remained obsessed with its supposedly evil consequences. Unlike the Conservative party in Britain, which decided after the creation of this country’s very differently constructed NHS that it would work with the recent state system, and not seek to undo it,the Republicans occupy made no effort whatever to create a historic compromise with Obamacare. Driven in large part by their extreme rightwing anti-government activist base and conservative funders who loathe the federal government’s involvement in almost anything except military spending, Republicans occupy instead vied with one another to pledge to murder the ACA and replace it with a cost-cutting alternative. “Repeal and replace” was Mr Trump’s slogan on the campaign trail. It was to be the recent administration’s domestic precedence. It would exhibit that Mr Trump can get things done.
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Source: theguardian.com