By Eric Schillinger ( August 4, 2017, 11:03 AM EDT) -- In the early hours of Friday, July 28, Republican-led efforts to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act were rebuffed on the Senate floor. By roughly 1:40 a.m., three Republican Senators — Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and, to the sound of Democratic applause and Republican gasps on the Senate floor, John McCain, R-Ariz. — had voted (alongside 48 Democrats) against their party's "skinny repeal" proposal, causing the measure to fail by a single vote (49-51). The proposal, which took the form of an amendment to the House's American Health Care Act (AHCA), would have replaced the House bill and renamed it the Health Care Freedom Act (HCFA)....