Indeed, it seems mainly to be congressional Democrats who favor this bill. After decades of failure, they are desperate to pass the bill, but they are placing their zeal ahead of true reform. Thus, they gave in to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who represents the insurance companies and objected first to a public option that could have restrained costs and then to expanding Medicare. Both were scrapped, though the public option remains in the House bill.
Then they let Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., hijack the bill. To secure his vote, they made abortion coverage more difficult and then finished the deal by buying him off with $100 million in additional Medicaid funding for Nebraska. Taxpayers of the other 49 states will pay for that.
I had heard but didn’t want to believe that Sen. Nelson was promised $100 million for his own State if he voted for the health bill. It’s the worst kind of politics. Where is the integrity?
The best we can hope for on this bill is a stalemate caused by the House and Senate versions being unable to be reconciled.
There is a very good reason that my mom told my dad that if he became a politician, she was gone!
Ooh. I had not heard that about the pay off.
I’m originally from Nebraska and was proud that Nelson held up the bill in favor of abortion restrictions. The pay off — not so proud.
But we can blame both sides here… the fact that the DEMS wanted to push it through so desperately as to offer a pay off rather than make it right is disgusting. I would hope that Nelson would have refused the payoff – (Jimmy Stewart-style) – but hey, two wrongs.