Trumpcuts defeated again as John McCain casts decisive vote against “skinny repeal”

Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans have once again won a reprieve from los­ing their health­care cov­er­age after the nar­row fail­ure of Mitch McConnel­l’s lat­est scheme to evis­cer­ate the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act in the Unit­ed States Senate.

By a vote of fifty-one to forty-nine, the Sen­ate reject­ed McConnel­l’s Amend­ment No. 667, the lat­est iter­a­tion of Trump­cuts. Amend­ment No. 667 would have gut­ted some key pro­vi­sions of the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, includ­ing the indi­vid­ual man­date and one of the law’s fund­ing sources. The New York Times explains:

The so-called “skin­ny” repeal bill, as it became known at the Capi­tol this week, would still have broad effects on health care. The bill would increase the num­ber of peo­ple who are unin­sured by 15 mil­lion next year com­pared with cur­rent law, accord­ing to the non­par­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office. Pre­mi­ums for peo­ple buy­ing insur­ance on their own would increase by rough­ly 20 per­cent, the bud­get office said.

The new, eight-page Sen­ate bill, called the Health Care Free­dom Act, was unveiled just hours before the vote. It would end the require­ment that most peo­ple have health cov­er­age, known as the indi­vid­ual man­date„ but it would not put in place oth­er incen­tives for peo­ple to obtain cov­er­age — a sit­u­a­tion that insur­ers say would leave them with a pool of sick­er, cost­lier cus­tomers. It would also end the require­ment that large employ­ers offer cov­er­age to their workers.

Fur­ther­more:

The “skin­ny repeal” would delay a tax on med­ical devices. It would also cut off fed­er­al funds for Planned Par­ent­hood for one year and increase fed­er­al grants to com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters. And it would increase the lim­it on con­tri­bu­tions to tax-favored health sav­ings accounts.

In addi­tion, the bill would make it much eas­i­er for states to waive fed­er­al require­ments that health insur­ance plans pro­vide con­sumers with a min­i­mum set of ben­e­fits like mater­ni­ty care and pre­scrip­tion drugs. It would also elim­i­nate funds pro­vid­ed by the Afford­able Care Act for a wide range of pre­ven­tion and pub­lic health programs.

McConnell was able to per­suade Dean Heller of Neva­da, Ron John­son of Wis­con­sin, Shel­ley Moore Capi­to of West Vir­ginia, and sev­er­al oth­er waver­ing mem­bers of his cau­cus to back his lat­est attempt to ram Trump­cuts through the U.S. Sen­ate. McConnell has been des­per­ate­ly try­ing to get some form of repeal bill through the Sen­ate to give Don­ald Trump a leg­isla­tive victory.

But in the end, he could not get to fifty votes.

John McCain cast the deci­sive “nay” vote that doomed the evil “skin­ny repeal” iter­a­tion of Trump­cuts, join­ing Lisa Murkows­ki and Susan Collins in break­ing with the Repub­li­can cau­cus. Only two days ago, it was McCain who pro­vid­ed the piv­otal fifti­eth vote need­ed for McConnell to res­ur­rect Trump­cuts. With his vote tonight, the demon is back in the bot­tle, so to speak, at least for the time being.

“From the begin­ning, I have believed that [the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act] should be repealed and replaced with a solu­tion that increas­es com­pe­ti­tion, low­ers costs, and improves care for the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” said McCain.

“The so-called ‘skin­ny repeal’ amend­ment the Sen­ate vot­ed on today would not accom­plish those goals. While the amend­ment would have repealed some of [PPA’s] most bur­den­some reg­u­la­tions, it offered no replace­ment to actu­al­ly reform our health care sys­tem and deliv­er afford­able, qual­i­ty health care to our cit­i­zens. The Speak­er’s state­ment that the House would be ‘will­ing’ to go to con­fer­ence does not ease my con­cern that this shell of a bill could be tak­en up and passed at any time.”

McConnel­l’s bit­ter­ness was on full dis­play. The Ken­tucky sen­a­tor could bare­ly bring him­self to look at his Demo­c­ra­t­ic colleagues.

“This is clear­ly a dis­ap­point­ing moment,” McConnell said as Amer­i­cans watch­ing on tele­vi­sion all over the coun­try rejoiced in his lat­est fail­ure to take away the health­care of mil­lions. “Yes, this is a dis­ap­point­ment. A dis­ap­point­ment indeed.”

For him, maybe. Not for us. This is anoth­er vic­to­ry for our patri­ot­ic resistance.

Democ­rats expressed great relief that Trump­cuts had been thwart­ed again.

“We’ve stopped this attack on health care, yet again. Thank you @PattyMurray and @SenatorCantwell for stand­ing up for the Ever­green State,” tweet­ed Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who, like many of us, stayed up to watch the vote.

“Tonight, the voic­es of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans were heard. Your sto­ries, your phone calls, your emails, your advo­ca­cy, and all of your hard work paid off. Tonight, we were able to pro­tect Med­ic­aid, pro­tect the Afford­able Care Act, and pre­serve cov­er­age for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans,” said Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell.

“Now we must chart a path to progress.  We need to find bipar­ti­san solu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the indi­vid­ual health insur­ance mar­ket, to dri­ve down costs, increase access, and inno­vate in the health care deliv­ery system.”

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west on Amend­ment 667 was as follows:

VOTING AYE: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID), Steve Daines (MT), Dan Sul­li­van (AK)

VOTING NAY: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

The vote on Amend­ment 667 was iden­ti­cal to the vote to advance Trump­cuts on Tues­day, with the excep­tion of John McCain’s “nay” vote.