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Donald Trump and congressional Republicans created a political debacle for themselves by believing a set of scare stories about Obamacare that came back to haunt them. It is an object lesson in how false realities ultimately pop like soap bubbles when pricked by plain old truth. There are five fatal fibs the GOP sold to supporters and to themselves. (David Horsey, 3/27)

Since US House Speaker Paul Ryan scrapped last week's vote on the Republican proposal to replace Obamacare, Trump has blamed different people for its demise, depending on the day. From the Oval Office on Friday, Trump blamed Democrats. On Saturday, Trump asked people to watch a Fox News Channel show on which the host proclaimed, "Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the House.” (James Pindell, 3/27)

When President Trump’s first major governing challenge unexpectedly crystallized last week, his failure to meet it was preordained by his personality. Because he considers himself the center of every universe, an opportunity to step toward greatness was invisible to him. His primary failure wasn’t his inability to persuade the hard-liners in his party to go along with a cobbled-together, cynical and desperate attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Solomon could not have salvaged that wreck. (Davis Merritt, 3/28)

Paul Ryan did it. That’s the argument many of the louder voices on the right are shouting. In the story they tell, the speaker of the House is fully responsible for the GOP’s failure to pass an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill last week. President Trump should walk across a Havana ballroom like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Part II,” kiss Ryan on the mouth and say, “I know it was you, Paul. You broke my heart.” (Jonah Goldberg, 3/27)

The Republicans’ failed strategy to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is puzzling. Knowing that a more conservative health-care bill would be dead on arrival in the Senate, why did President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) seek the votes of the House Freedom Caucus (HFC), a group of about 30 of the chamber’s most conservative members? Desperate to secure a majority, the White House offered significant last-minute policy concessions to the group — turning off the more centrist members of the Tuesday Group, failing to secure Freedom Caucus votes and dooming the bill. (Ruth Bloch Rubin, 3/27)

The full dimensions of the GOP’s self-defeat on health care will emerge over time, but one immediate consequence is giving up block grants for Medicaid. This transformation would have put the program on a budget for the first time since it was created in 1965, and the bill’s opponents ought to be held accountable for the rising spending that they could have prevented. (3/27)

A few days before the House Freedom Caucus brought down the American Health Care Act, Rep. Mark Meadows laid out the stakes for his group: “This is a defining moment for our nation, but it’s also a defining moment for the Freedom Caucus.” The North Carolina Republican was right. The vote was indeed a defining moment — a test in which the Freedom Caucus had to decide: Would it remain a minoritarian opposition bloc whose only role was to defend truth without compromise? Or could it become something bigger, transforming itself into a majoritarian governing force that could lead Congress toward achievable conservative victories and have a lasting impact on the direction of our country? (Marc A. Thiessen, 3/27)

Somehow, despite the intense political forces arrayed against it, and the mind-boggling policy problems it tries to solve, the 2010 health care law keeps defying efforts to wipe it out. That says something about the people who wrote it ― and what they have achieved. Obamacare has never been hugely popular, and it has never worked as well as its architects hoped. Millions of Americans don’t like it and, even now, there are parts of the country where the markets are struggling to survive. But the program has provided security and access to care for millions of others. More importantly, it has shifted the expectations of what government should do ― and of what a decent society looks like. (Jonathan Cohn, 3/26)

A World War II-era mistake distorted the U.S. health insurance system. Reformers tried to fix the problem with patchwork solutions until Obamacare dumped yet another layer of misguided policy onto what was already a mess. Now the tangle is so perplexing that a Republican Congress, under a Republican president, could not even bring a health-insurance reform bill to a vote last week. But legislators will no doubt try to tackle the issue again, and when they do, they should consider erasing the original error instead of merely papering it over. (Myron Magnet, 3/28)

While the keyhole of history has had insufficient time to bring the failed launch of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) into focus, it’s not too soon to begin learning some of the lessons it can teach us. Legislative efforts have a lifespan but our health care system does not. So whether we are still rejoicing or recriminating, let’s take a look at some timeless principles we can apply to the ongoing effort to improve health care in the United States. (Billy Wynne, 3/27)