Senate Republican Effort To Repeal Affordable Care Act Fails By Single Vote, Trump Spends Following Nine Years Attacking Republican Who Cast It Until Senator's Death, At Which Point Attacks Continue

WASHINGTON. The Senate's third and final attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act collapsed shortly after 1:30 a.m. Friday following a 49 to 51 procedural vote on a bill that Senate leadership had introduced four hours earlier, finalized two hours earlier, and asked nobody to read at any point in between.

The legislation, formally titled the Health Care Freedom Act and informally known as the "skinny repeal," would have eliminated the Affordable Care Act's individual and employer mandates, defunded Planned Parenthood for one year, and, by the Congressional Budget Office's nonpartisan estimate, increased the number of Americans without health insurance by 16 million within a decade. Senate Republican leaders had described the bill on the floor in the hours preceding the vote as "a vehicle to get to conference," and had acknowledged in interviews that they did not actually want it to become law in its current form, only to advance it for further negotiation behind closed doors.

Three Republican senators voting no, including John McCain, who had returned to Washington from brain cancer treatment to cast the decisive vote against legislation Senate leadership had themselves described as inadequate, provided the procedural setback to which President Trump would direct the remainder of his administration's healthcare attention.

"He let his party down. He let his country down. I will never forgive him," Mr. Trump said of Senator McCain in remarks repeated at multiple subsequent rallies and statements, pausing the commentary briefly in August 2018 only long enough to order the White House flag returned to full staff ahead of the Senate's customary mourning period for the deceased Senator.

Sources within the administration confirmed that the President had spent the days preceding the vote describing the bill privately as "a piece of shit" while simultaneously demanding by tweet that Senate Republicans pass it without further amendment, and that he subsequently spent the remainder of his first term, the four years of his interregnum, and the opening months of his second term identifying the procedural vote as the most significant act of personal disloyalty he had encountered during a public career containing few competitors for the distinction.

At press time, the President was reviewing administrative mechanisms by which to harm the law through executive action that the Senate had now twice declined to repeal, and aides confirmed that the 16 million Americans whose coverage had been contingent on the previous evening's vote would be permitted to remain insured pending further presidential consideration.