SPEAKER of the House Paul Ryan talking about the decision to pull the Republican replacement for “Obamacare.” (C-SPAN)

The proposed American Health Care Act – presented as a replacement for “Obamacare” – was pulled just before a planned vote on the measure by the House of Representatives on Friday afternoon in Washington. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said there were not enough votes to pass the bill.

In a press conference, he said “I will not sugarcoat this. This is a disappointing day for us,Obamacare is the law of the land, it will remain the law of the land until it’s replaced. We are going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”

The AHCA would have been the Republican substitute for Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The GOP  alternative suffered from a split within party ranks between moderates who feared the bill would leave too many people without health insurance and hard-core conservatives who felt it didn’t go far enough to undo the ACA. Additionally, all House Democrats pledged to vote “no.”

A recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that an end to Obamacare could leave up to 24 million people without health insurance.