Trump Did Not ‘Save’ Obamacare. He Just Failed to Kill It.

On Donald J. Trump’s first day as president, he signed an executive order to repeal Obamacare.

His first major legislative push was an unsuccessful effort to “repeal and replace” the law, officially the Affordable Care Act. He would have done so by restructuring Medicaid, weakening protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, and shifting funding for private insurance away from the poorer and sicker to the healthier and wealthier.

His first year in office was punctuated by a series of regulatory decisions that tended to weaken already rickety Obamacare marketplaces. He cut spending on advertising and enrollment assistance. His government circulated videos and Twitter posts criticizing the law. His health officials shortened the window when Americans could sign up for coverage, and took the website offline for 12 hours each weekend during that period for maintenance.

“We’ll let Obamacare fail,” Mr. Trump said in July 2017, when the repeal bills were struggling. “And then the Democrats are going to come to us.”

But in recent debate performances, both Mr. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, have been telling voters that Mr. Trump saved Obamacare.

It is more accurate to say he simply failed in his efforts to kill it.

Mr. Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, which was then unpopular, during his winning campaign. Such promises had helped many Republicans win office since the law’s passage in early 2010. But his administration’s unsuccessful efforts to eliminate it reversed public opinion, by highlighting trade-offs inherent in the original bill. While the law had tended to increase insurance premiums for certain groups, it had also substantially expanded coverage for others.

As the repeal debate unfolded,