Health Care Failed Because Of Trump, Not Paul Ryan, Americans Say In Poll

After years of promising to repeal and replace Obamacare, the Republican Party had its shot but quickly failed last week when the American Health Care Act (AHCA) couldn't register the necessary votes to pass through the House of Representatives.

Far more Americans blamed President Donald Trump for the bill falling apart than they did Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found Wednesday. The bill—at times nicknamed both "Trumpcare" and "Ryancare"—was pulled before a vote could even be taken, as GOP leadership realized they didn't have the support they needed within their party.

Twenty-three percent of Americans overall blamed Trump while just eight percent blamed Ryan.

Republicans, however, were most likely to blame Democrats in the House. Twenty-six percent felt it was the other side of the aisle's fault. Twenty-three percent of Republicans, meanwhile, blamed GOP members of the House, 13 percent blamed Trump, 10 percent Ryan and eight percent the media, according to Reuters/Ipsos.

The survey was conducted from Saturday to Tuesday, polling 1,332 people. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall group and five percentage points within the Democrat or Republican subgroups.

Trump has cast blame for the AHCA's failure on both the House Democrats and the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right group of congressional Republicans, whom the president said he was disappointed in after they didn't back the legislation. But Trump has since claimed an Obamacare replacement would get done.

"I know that we're all going to make a deal on health care. That's such an easy one, so I have no doubt that that's going to happen very quickly," Trump said while speaking with senators this week. "I think it will, actually. I think it's going to happen. Because we've all been promising, Democrat, Republican, we've all been promising that to the American people. So I think a lot of good things are going to happen there."