Last week’s colossal failure by House Republicans to pass the American Health Care Act, a bill which aimed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”) and replace it with the GOP’s alternative, bodes well for the future of healthcare in the Mountain State.

While the state voted overwhelmingly in favor of President Donald Trump in the 2016 election — a candidate who vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on day one, a statement he made on multiple occasions throughout his campaign — residents of West Virginia benefit from the Affordable Care Act at a higher rate than most other states.

Upon the Affordable Care Act’s passage in 2010, West Virginia took advantage of the legislation’s Medicaid expansions and worked to increase the number of insured individuals in the state. And it worked. West Virginia went from a 14.6 percent uninsured rate in 2010 to an uninsured rate of only six percent in 2015, West Virginia Public Broadcasting reported. And according to The Wheeling Intelligencer, only six other states have a higher rate of residents taking advantage of Medicaid, with more than 554,000 West Virginian residents enrolled in the program.

Simply put, the Affordable Care Act paved the way for more accessible healthcare coverage in West Virginia.

In contrast, the American Health Care Act threatened to squander the progress the state has made with healthcare in the recent past, with the result likely being “higher prices for insurance, and fewer people with the ability to buy it,” according to The New York Times’ Upshot blog. The Times’ blog also reports that the bill would have led to “major reductions in the number of Americans covered by Medicaid,” as well as an increased difficulty for older people to access insurance.

This doesn’t mention the detrimental impact the bill would have had on the nation as a whole, with the Congressional Budget Office projecting 24 million fewer people would be covered under the GOP plan.

The House was set to vote on the American Health Care Act Thursday, before the vote was postponed until Friday amidst reports that key GOP members were neglecting to jump on board with the highly lambasted piece of legislation. But Friday afternoon, Republican leaders had still yet to secure the votes needed to pass the bill, which resulted in it being pulled at the last moment from a likely-catastrophic vote.

While key Republican figures like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan expressed their disappointment in the bill’s failure, the president responded by laying the blame on House Democrats — whose support was not necessary had Republicans voted along party lines — and resigned himself to the idea that Obamacare will “explode” in the near future.

But this isn’t necessarily true.

Around 12.2 million people have signed up for coverage this year alone, a modest four percent reduction from the 12.7 million who had signed up around this time last year, according to USA Today. And the CBO have found the Affordable Care Act to be in stable condition, far from the “death spiral” some Republicans have labeled it to be in.

It is true, however, that the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect. This year, 960 counties in the United States will have access to only a single insurance provider. And West Virginia premiums are expected to rise 32 percent in 2017, according to West Virginia MetroNews.

Yet, the GOP’s replacement plan simply wasn’t the solution to address these problems, as evidenced by the House’s inability to gather the necessary support for the legislation and the criticism the bill received from both sides of the aisle. Not to mention the fact that, had the bill become law, the impact on West Virginians could have been disastrous.

In the future, both political parties should work on a more palatable solution that provides healthcare for the Americans who need it the most.