HEALTHCARE/JOHN MCCAIN/OBAMCARE(ACA): “In the end, it was a simple hand gesture – Senator John McCain pointing his right index finger in a downward motion to register a no vote – that ruined his party’s seven-year effort to repeal Obamacare.
But in that signal in the early hours of Friday [7-28-17], the 80-year-old McCain also delivered a political gut-punch to U.S. President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican and a man he has clashed with repeatedly over the past two years.
McCain, who just last week was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, dropped a hint on Tuesday that if his legislative demands were not met he was prepared to take on Trump in the dispute over how to replace parts of Obamacare with a Republican healthcare program…
The following day, Trump said McCain’s work on behalf of military veterans was ‘all talk no action.’
McCain, a leading Republican voice on defense and security, has generally been restrained in his criticism of Trump but has also at times let loose, including recent accusations that Trump has weakened America’s standing in world affairs and kowtowed to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
With his Friday vote that brought the tally to 51-49 against a Republican bill repealing parts of former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, McCain became the third Senate Republican to bolt, leaving no path for passage of the measure.”
-Richard Cowan, “McCain, once belittled by Trump, hands him big defeat in U.S. healthcare vote,” Reuters, July 28, 2017 10:06am