If history didn’t have a way of repeating itself, the tawdry battle of King vs. Burwell would by now be an obscure footnote. Instead, that defunct legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is looking more like a template for the future than an ugly but meaningless sideshow.

The challengers in King ultimately failed, but their aim was dastardly. Last year, they asked the Supreme Court to adopt a decontextualized and highly misleading interpretation of the ACA, under which the federal government would be prohibited from subsidizing Obamacare exchange–based insurance plans in the majority of states. The federally run markets in these states would have collapsed, and millions of people would have lost their health insurance.

Such a calamitous ruling would have blown the doors of the health care reform debate wide open once again, except this time Republicans would be in control Congress, and any “fix” to the problem would have to run through them.

These Republicans, as had been their wont for several years by then, didn’t have a plan in place for winning that lawsuit. They talked a big game about creating a “bridge away from Obamacare,” but on Capitol Hill it was a not-so-well-kept secret that many Republicans and their aides were scared to win. They didn’t want to be blamed for the ensuing humanitarian crisis, or bear responsibility for resolving it. Unsurprisingly, the “bridge away from Obamacare” was a patch that would’ve restored subsidies temporarily, so that a negotiated settlement would determine the ultimate fate of the Affordable Care Act after the election. They were the dog chasing the car, in other words, but they didn’t really care to catch it.

They caught it in a big way on November 8 of this year. And suddenly all the sentiments surrounding King vs. Burwell—liberal anguish, conflicted hostility on the right—have become relevant once again.