This sort of thing is bound to annoy the health law’s supporters, but it suggests that the repeated votes to repeal the law have been effective—not, obviously, at taking the law down, but at changing the way it works, and at creating political conditions that might be more amenable to repeal at some point in the future. With the Senate and the White House controlled by Democrats, Republicans opposed to the health law are limited in the ways they can move the ball on the goal of full repeal. But they’re not entirely powerless. The repeal votes are not only a symbolic way of expressing opposition to the law, they’re also a way of helping to preserve the (admittedly small) possibility that they might have the power and political will to fully repeal the law at some point in the future.