John McCain is turning tail again. He announced today that he plans to vote against the upcoming, perhaps last ditch effort, to replace the mangled Obamacare system in place.
“I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried,” he said in a statement Friday.
“Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won’t be available by the end of the month, we won’t have reliable answers to any of those questions,” McCain said.
As reported by Laura Litvan for Bloomberg:
The statement recalls McCain’s dramatic return to Washington in July after a brain-cancer diagnosis, when he cast the decisive “no” vote to send a health plan by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell down to a stunning 49-51 defeat.The GOP drive to gut the Affordable Care Act is using a dramatically short-circuited process that seeks to replace one landmark health law with another introduced just two weeks ago by Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
The GOP drive to gut the Affordable Care Act is using a dramatically short-circuited process that seeks to replace one landmark health law with another introduced just two weeks ago by Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
Hospital and health insurance stocks moved upward after McCain’s announcement. The S&P 500 Managed Health Care Index of insurers pared earlier losses and was down about 1 percent at 2:41 p.m. in New York. A Bloomberg Intelligence index of hospital stocks gained 1.3 percent.
McCain and Graham have long been best friends, and Graham wrote on Twitter Friday, “My friendship with @SenJohnMcCain is not based on how he votes but respect for how he’s lived his life and the person he is.”
“I feel an obligation to fix this disaster and intend to push forward for state-centric healthcare vs Washington-knows-best health care,” Graham said on Twitter.