The House Healthcare Debacle Didn’t Have to Be This Way

On Friday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s crumbling halfway house — known officially as the American Health Care Act — definitively collapsed.

So far, the standard tactic among Republican leadership and the mainstream media has been to point fingers at the House Freedom Caucus and blame them for obstinately blocking the bill. But this is laughable and untrue. The repeal and replace movement didn’t have to wind up in the mess it did on Friday, and pundits and politicians alike need to take a long, hard look at the facts.

In the 114th Congress, Republicans passed the Restoring Americans’ Health Care Freedom Act, which repealed much of Obamacare. The bill delivered on most fronts: It gutted most of Obamacare’s taxes, it erased its tax and cost-sharing subsidies, it blocked Medicaid’s two-year window for expansion, and it cancelled the individual and employer mandates.

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