My understanding was that this was a pure FUCK YOU. This was a 50 vote role call to move the bill to the house for a vote. Due to this being a reconciliation bill, all they needed was 50+1(Pence). Due to Senate rules, with the failure of this reconciliation vote, they have to start from scratch and have to go through the normal rules. McCain was on-board according to the article on The Hill or maybe Forbes(?) until he walked onto the floor and voted. Hate McCain, will probably hate him forever, but man this was a great move to fuck the process.
And more than that, this was part of budget reconciliation. And before they can actually do any budget reconciliation, they needed to get the fake budget reconciliation out of the way. And now the fake budget reconciliation is done, and they have to do real budget reconciliation, which means if they want to try this again, they have to do it the next time they have a budget to reconcile.