Senators save the day on health care — for now

Sen. John McCain, war hero and stalwart of the traditional Republican party, summoned courage anew Friday morning to call the horrendous “skinny” Obamacare repeal bill for what it was and to cast the deciding vote to stop it.

The 80-year-old Republican, once his party’s nominee for president and now facing down brain cancer, never lightly broke with the GOP. But drawing on core values most Republicans now check at the door, McCain’s “no” vote embodied the truth:

The GOP’s manic attempt to reform the health care sector that represents onesixth of the U.S. economy and determines life or death for millions of Americans was utterly craven.

Reflecting after the session, McCain told reporters, “I thought it was the right vote. I did my job as a senator.”

He did. So did the other two Republican senators who said no — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They consistently had objected to the substance of the bill and its heavy toll on their constituents. Speaking of courage.

McCain’s vote rejected the insular process the GOP had used, ultimately urging passage of an obviously bad bill because it would never become law, it would just be a ticket to a Senate-House conference committee.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham summed up this strategy, saying: “The skinny bill as policy is a disaster. The skinny bill as a replacement for Obamacare is a fraud.” And then voting for it.

McCain was right to worry that it could become law. The 16 million people who would lose care under the Senate bill was fewer than the 22 million the House already agreed to cut off. Speaker Paul Ryan could easily have passed this plan verbatim in the House and sent it to the president, bypassing the need to take anything back to the deeply divided Senate.

So the repeal-and-replace that Trump repeatedly promised on Day One remains elusive. But the gains of the Affordable Care Act are no more safe.

Republicans already are seeking cuts and caps to Medicaid in the federal budget to reduce coverage for low income families and seniors in nursing homes. What they can’t do in one killing blow, they hope to accomplish with a thousand cuts.

McCain’s eloquent appeal earlier in the week for a bipartisan, studied, public approach to health care reform was of course on target. It’s essentially the path that President Obama took for the better part of 2009.

But in the end Republicans bowed out of talks, preferring to pledge repeal rather than compromising on a better plan. Like President Trump, they were all about “winning.” Compromise is for losers.

Both parties would do well to heed McCain’s words earlier in the week:

“There’s greater satisfaction in respecting our differences, but not letting them prevent agreements that don’t require abandonment of core principles — agreements made in good faith that help improve lives and protect the American people.”