A Republican who lost his House seat in last week's midterm election says the late Sen. John McCain helped Democrats win back the House by voting in 2017 against a GOP Obamacare repeal bill.

“McCain’s last-minute decision prompted a ‘green wave’ of liberal special-interest money, which was used to propagate false claims that the House plan ‘gutted coverage for people with pre-existing conditions,’” Rep. Jason Lewis, R-Minn., who lost last week to Democrat Angie Craig, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “That line was the Democrats’ most potent attack in the midterms."

McCain, who died of brain cancer in August, voted with GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine and all of the Senate’s Democrats to defeat a “skinny” repeal bill that the Senate brought up in July 2017.

Republican leadership believed the bill, which gutted Obamacare’s mandates and some taxes, was not meant to become law, but was meant to be a vehicle to start conference talks with the House. But the GOP effort to strike down Obamacare was seen as a major political liability for Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections, which saw Democrats gain the majority after netting more than 30 seats.

Lewis’ claim that McCain should be blamed drew a sharp rebuke from the late senator's daughter, Meghan McCain, who tweeted that “this is abhorrent.”

[Opinion: Did John McCain really kill the House GOP majority?]





Julie Tarallo, McCain’s former communication’s director, also blasted the op-ed as “absolutely disgraceful.”

“Things that contributed to Lewis losing his seat by 6 points: calling women ‘sluts’ & shaming sexual assault survivors,” Tarallo tweeted. “Things that DIDN’T contribute: John McCain.”

But Lewis argued that the defeat of the bill in such a public way at McCain's hands left Republicans in a bad spot, and said the GOP should have found another way to try again on Obamacare.

“To be sure, instead of running away from health-care reform after it failed, Republicans should have leaned in on the plan’s most important aspects,” Lewis said. “But because the [repeal bill] didn’t pass, it was impossible to refute the lies about it.”

Lewis wrote that the bill included $138 billion for high-risk pools to cover people with pre-existing conditions in states that got a waiver. However, that $138 billion was meant for overall stabilization of Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces while they transitioned to a new statement.

The House only allocated $8 billion over five years for high-risk pools, which several critics said was not enough to ensure adequate coverage of people with pre-existing conditions. The Congressional Budget Office said the House repeal bill, called the American Health Care Act, would have made it harder for people with pre-existing conditions to get affordable coverage if they lived in a state that got a waiver to allow insurers to ignore insurance regulations.

Rep. Ryan Costello, R-Pa., who did not seek re-election, said the blame shouldn't fall on McCain, but should instead fall on the House Freedom Caucus, a collection of about three-dozen conservative lawmakers.

"Freedom Caucus (HFC) coined original Bill 'Obama Lite', whipped No, forced [House GOP leadership] to have pre-ex & [essential health benefits] subject to State Waiver w guardrails," Costello tweeted. "HFC talkradio/Breitbart demanded changes to support. Changes then led to Dem attacks. Not debateable, it’s factual."