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Democrats, after playing defense on health care for nearly a decade, are trying to turn the issue to their political advantage, targeting in particular lawmakers who have gone on record voting for a GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, racing to advance the legislation, voted to approve the bill last week—before the Congressional Budget Office had analyzed its impact and found that the bill would leave 24 million more Americans without health insurance. (Hook, 3/14)

The party in power has twice attempted to overhaul health care in the past quarter-century. And both times it ended up with politically catastrophic results. Now, the GOP attempt to replace Obamacare is shaping up to be the defining issue of the 2018 midterm elections — one big enough to rattle the foundations of Donald Trump-era Washington and beyond. (Debenedetti, 3/15)

A simmering rebellion of conservative populists loyal to President Trump is further endangering the GOP health-care push, with a chorus of influential voices suspicious of the proposal warning the president to abandon it. From headlines at Breitbart to chatter on Fox News Channel and right-wing talk radio, as well as among friends who have Trump’s ear, the message has been blunt: The plan being advanced by congressional Republican leaders is deeply flawed — and, at worst, a political trap. (Costa and Rucker, 3/14)

Republicans from rural states increasingly are worried that their party’s plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would inflict damage on vulnerable communities, especially the poor and middle-aged in isolated areas whose votes helped catapult Donald Trump into the White House. The concerns are a byproduct of this week’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the GOP replacement, which highlighted multiple ways that the health care plan falls far short of Trump’s campaign promise to keep Medicaid intact and to create a system that provides “insurance for everybody.’’ (Herndon and McGrane, 3/14)

House Republicans’ legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare could loom large over the 2020 elections, when both President Trump and a handful of GOP senators in Medicaid expansion states will be up for another term. If the current legislation passes, millions of Americans who receive health insurance through ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion are projected to lose coverage a year before the critical election, creating the potential for political backlash at the ballot box. (Hagen, 3/15)

Republicans don’t just have a policy problem with their proposed health care plan; they’ve got a political problem: It hurts some of the older and low-income voters who helped put Donald Trump in the White House, and helps younger voters who wanted little to do with him. Plus, features of the American Health Care Act are going to be tough to explain the next time members of Congress return home to face voters for the break that begins in April. (Garofoli, 3/14)

Kansas 2nd District Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins was jeered Monday at a town hall meeting in Lawrence for defending President Donald Trump and the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Jenkins, a five-term Republican who has announced that she won’t run for re-election in 2018, maintained a tight smile throughout the raucous meeting at the Dole Institute of Politics on the University of Kansas campus. The crowd, estimated around 350 people, regularly interrupted her with boos and shouts of “that’s not true” as she attempted to defend the American Health Care Act, the ACA replacement bill backed by Trump and GOP congressional leaders. (McLean, 3/14)