Republican leaders had planned a vote on the measure after Trump cut off negotiations with Republicans who had balked at the plan and issued an ultimatum to vote yesterday, win or lose.
It was unclear whether the bill might be rescheduled, although Trump told the Washington Post, that “we just pulled it”.
Amid a chaotic scramble for votes, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who has championed the bill, met Trump at the White House before the bill was pulled from the House floor after hours of debate.
Without the bill’s passage in Congress, Democratic former president Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, the 2010 Affordable Care Act – known as Obamacare – would remain in place despite seven years of Republican promises to dismantle it.
Repealing and replacing Obamacare was a top campaign promise by Trump in the 2016 presidential election, as well as by most Republican candidates, “from dog-catcher on up”, as White House spokesman Sean Spicer put it during a briefing yesterday.
On Thursday night Trump had issued an ultimatum that lawmakers pass the legislation that has his backing or keep in place the Obamacare law that Republicans have sought to dismantle since it was enacted seven years ago.
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump had said at the White House, adding that Ryan should keep his job regardless of the outcome.
“There’s nobody that objectively can look at this effort and say the president didn’t do every single thing he possibly could with this team to get every vote possible,” Spicer told reporters.
Trump already has been stymied by federal courts that blocked his executive actions barring entry into the United States of people from several Muslim-majority nations.
Some Republicans worry a defeat on the healthcare legislation could cripple his presidency just two months after the wealthy New York real estate mogul took office.
Representative Dana Rohrabacher had predicted that the bill would pass and said voting it down would be “neutering Trump” while empowering his opponents.
“You don’t cut the balls off a bull and then expect that he can go out and get the job done,” Rohrabacher told Reuters. “This will emasculate Trump and we can’t do that ... if we bring this down now, Trump will have lost all of his leverage to pass whatever bill it is, whether it’s the tax bill or whatever reforms that he wants.”
In a blow to the bill’s prospects, House Appropriations Committee chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen had announced his opposition, expressing concern about reductions in coverage under the Medicaid insurance programme for the poor and the retraction of “essential” health benefits that insurers must cover.
“We need to get this right for all Americans,” Frelinghuysen said.
Representative Rodney Davis, a member of the House Republican team trying to win passage, had said the bill was short of the needed votes while White House budget director Mick Mulvaney admitted that it was unclear if enough support was present.
Vice-President Mike Pence, a former House member and influential among Republican lawmakers, postponed a planned trip to Arkansas and Tennessee to try to secure passage.
Before the legislation was pulled, Spicer said that whatever happens, Trump still has a “a lot left on the agenda that he wants to get done”, including immigration policy, tax cuts and the US-Mexico border wall.
Obamacare boosted the number of Americans with health insurance through mandates on individuals and employers, and income-based subsidies.
About 20mn Americans gained insurance coverage through the law.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said under the Republican legislation 14mn people would lose medical coverage by next year and more than 24mn would be uninsured in 2026.
Days of negotiations involving Republican lawmakers and the White House led to some changes in the bill but failed to produce a consensus deal.
The House plan would rescind a range of taxes created by Obamacare, end a penalty on people who refuse to obtain health insurance, end Obamacare’s income-based subsidies to help people buy insurance while creating less-generous age-based tax credits.
It also would end Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid state-federal insurance programme for the poor, cut future federal Medicaid funding and let states impose work requirements on some Medicaid recipients.
House leaders agreed to a series of last-minute changes to try to win over disgruntled conservatives, including ending the Obamacare requirement that insurers cover certain “essential benefits” such as maternity care, mental health services and prescription drug coverage.