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The personality looming over the 2018 midterms was President Donald Trump. The issue was health care, the top concern for voters as they decided how to cast their ballots. This week's election showed a nation increasingly — if belatedly — in step with former President Barack Obama's approach to it. (Mulvihill and Alonso-Zaldivar, 11/8)

For eight years, Republicans waged a war against Barack Obama’s health-care law, holding dozens of repeal votes, filing lawsuits and branding it a dangerous government takeover. On Wednesday, they effectively surrendered. The day after crushing midterm election losses handed Democrats control of the House, GOP leaders signaled they had no appetite to make another go at shredding the signature accomplishment of Obama’s presidency anytime soon. (Sullivan, 11/7)

Congress’s health-care priorities are likely to focus on drug prices as Obamacare repeal becomes a non-starter for a split legislature, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday. On changes to Obamacare, “I think it is very obvious that a Democratic House is not going to be interested in that,” McConnell said at a post-midterm elections news conference in Washington, after Democrats won control of the House of Representatives and Republicans added to their control of the Senate. (Armstrong, 11/7)

Obamacare repeal is officially dead. On to the battle over Medicare for All. Tuesday’s midterm victories by Democrats mean that Republicans no longer have a path to make major changes to the Affordable Care Act. It also sets up a debate between Democrats’ liberal and moderate wings over whether to embrace a broad expansion of insurance to all Americans as they prepare to challenge President Donald Trump for the presidency in 2020. (Tozzi, 11/7)

According to the Associated Press, 26 percent of voters said health care was the most important issue for them in deciding their vote, and three out of four voters who listed health care as their top issue voted for Democrats. Economic issues like health care premiums and protections for pre-existing conditions were dominant themes in political ads throughout the campaign, and seemed to resonate with voters. (Adams, 11/7)