By THOMAS KAPLAN and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS May 4th, 2017

■ President Trump declared victory in the Rose Garden. “I’m president! Can you believe it?”

■ The legislation still faces steep hurdles in the Senate. 

A narrow victory in the House

With the vote Thursday, Republicans recovered from their earlier failures and moved a step closer to delivering their promise to reshape American health care without mandated insurance coverage.

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The vote, 217-to-213, on President Trump’s 105th day in office, keeps alive the Republican dream of unwinding the signature legislative achievement of former President Barack Obama. The House measure faces profound uncertainty in the Senate, where the legislation’s steep spending cuts will almost certainly be moderated. Any legislation that can get through the Senate will again have to clear the House and its conservative majority.

A White House victory lap

President Trump on Thursday declared victory in his push to repeal the Affordable Care Act and overhaul the nation’s health system without mandated coverage, saying the plan would bring down costs for Americans.

“Yes, premiums will be coming down; yes, deductibles will be coming down, but very importantly, it is a great plan,” Mr. Trump said in White House Rose Garden, flanked by Republican lawmakers. It was the kind of exuberant event typically reserved for legislation that is being signed into law, rather than a controversial bill that has narrowly passed one chamber and faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

But Mr. Trump was eager to savor the moment. Just over a month ago, he suffered a humiliating defeat on the health care plan when House leaders were forced to abruptly cancel a planned vote on the legislation because of opposition from within their own ranks, even after a burst of personal lobbying from the president.

“We want to brag about the plan,” Mr. Trump said, after asking those assembled how he was doing in his debut as a politician. “Hey, I’m president!”

Still, the victory was likely to be a fleeting one; the measure in its current form has little chance of advancement in the Senate, where its steep Medicaid cuts and provisions to scale back health benefits are being met with skepticism from members of both parties.

“We’re going to get this finished,” Mr. Trump said, before moving on to “the biggest tax cut in our nation’s history.”

“We’re going to have a tremendous eight years,” he proclaimed.

What comes next?

Despite the passage of the bill in the House, the Affordable Care Act will remain in place — at least for now.

The repeal bill is not likely to be met with great celebration in the Senate.

Yes, Republican senators share their House colleagues’ desire to repeal major parts of the Obama-era health law.

But they may not agree on exactly which parts.

Already, Republicans in the Senate have aired a variety of concerns about the House plan, including how it would affect states that expanded Medicaid under the health law and whether it would raise premiums to unaffordable levels for older Americans.

In other words, expect to see plenty of changes to the House bill — and, in the long run, plenty more fits and starts.