John McCain’s surprise, middle-of-the-night thumb down that sunk his party’s Obamacare repeal bill last week made for perfect political showbiz. But signals the Arizona Republican would be the final GOP defector were there all along. After all, McCain’s a mostly free spirit from a state that deeply benefited from the Affordable Care Act. And he likes some drama now and again.
McCain’s never really belonged to the brand of tea party-style Republicans who loved to rail against Obamacare. He criticized the ACA when he needed to, like when he was running for reelection in 2010 and again last year. But McCain didn’t share many of his colleagues’ perspective that virtually anything would be better than President Obama’s health-care law.
Besides, McCain is used to ducking the party line on other issues, too, like campaign finance reform and climate change.
“There’s a certain impulsiveness about McCain, and every once in a while he tends to stray from orthodoxy,” David Berman, a political science professor at Arizona State University, told me.
If there were ever a time for McCain to stray from orthodoxy and do whatever he wants, it’s now. Just a few days before the Senate vote on its "skinny repeal" bill, the 80-year-old announced he has glioblastoma, a common but aggressive form of brain cancer.
So while McCain sees the same realities back home as Arizona’s other senator, Republican Jeff Flake, the two parted ways on Obamacare partly because they are facing far different political situations. McCain, in all likelihood, never has to worry about another election, while Flake is facing a potentially tough reelection race next year.
Speaking of those realities back home, they’re harsh.
Arizona is among the handful of Republican-led states that expanded Medicaid to cover low-income, childless adults. That program, along with new opportunities for coverage through federally subsidized marketplace plans, has provided coverage to half a million Arizonans over the past few years. Arizona’s uninsured rate fell from 17.3 percent in 2009 to 10.8 in 2015 – the 13th-largest drop in the nation during that time.
