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It’s always tempting to declare the outcome of any contest preordained, even when it was closer than it looks. One side’s victory in the World Series or a presidential election often is treated as inevitable in retrospect, though a single timely hit or strikeout or the shift of a few thousand votes in a couple of states might have been the determining factor. With repeal, however, failure was baked into the outcome from the start. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/26)

While repeal will never be truly dead until Democrats take back either a house of Congress or the presidency, this latest GOP failure gives us a chance to take stock of what we’ve learned. (Paul Waldman, 9/26)

We may never know how many Republicans in the U.S. Senate would have voted against the latest ill-conceived and disruptive proposal to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. But we know the three whose public opposition kept the measure from reaching the Senate floor this week — Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Although they disagree sharply over what to do about the ACA, they all deserve the country’s thanks for stopping lawmakers from heedlessly leaving millions of lower- and middle-income Americans unable to afford coverage and sending the market for non-group policies into a death spiral. (9/26)

Senate Republicans on Tuesday abandoned their latest effort to replace ObamaCare, or, more precisely, a handful of Senators defeated the Graham-Cassidy proposal despite their campaign rhetoric. Mark them down as ObamaCare’s saviors. (9/26)

President Trump clearly has no clue what’s happening on health care, taxes or really any other major policy front. He has also made abundantly clear that he has no interest in getting up to speed. Unfortunately, Trump’s unseriousness has become so grotesque, so all-consuming, that it has distracted us from dozens of other dilettantes and demagogues in Washington — far too many of them other members of Trump’s own political party. (Catherine Rampell, 9/25)

Nine months into the GOP’s total control of the federal government, the obsessive campaign to dismantle the ACA has succeeded mainly in expanding the ranks of its unlikely defenders in the face of grim alternatives. It’s a measure of the depth and illogic of this obsession that Republicans have yet to give it up completely. (9/26)

The Graham-Cassidy health care bill appears to be mercifully dead, as Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that Republicans would not vote on the bill. It’s possible that the measure, which already is in its fourth iteration, could be changed once again to entice wayward Republicans. But Graham-Cassidy is caught in the same taffy pull as previous attempts at Obamacare repeal. Make the bill more conservative, and moderate Republicans will flee, and vice versa. Call it death by intra-party politics. A pre-existing condition. (9/26)