Ben Nelson sells his health care vote to Harry Reid

Senator Ben Nelson “negotiated” some changes to the Senate Health bill that have were needed to gain his support. One change stipulated that federal money wouldn’t be used to pay for abortions, while the others are nothing but freebies for Nebraskans. Here’s a brief summary:

Nelson secured full federal funding for his state to expand Medicaid coverage to all individuals below 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Other states must pay a small portion of the additional cost. He won concessions for qualifying nonprofit insurers and for Medigap providers from a new insurance tax, and was able to roll back cuts to health savings accounts.

“I know this is hard for some of my colleagues to accept and I appreciate their right to disagree,” Nelson told reporters at the Capitol, of the many changes made at his behest. “But I would not have voted for this bill without these provisions.”

If you read this blog regularly, then you know that I strongly oppose the Senate health care bill. With that said, if I was a Senator who supported it, I would likely vote no due to the favorable treatment Nebraska’s citizens will receive. If every other state is making a contribution, then why shouldn’t Nebraska? It’s because Senator Ben Nelson is the last hold-out, so he figured he could hold the bill’s supporters hostage. There’s a lesson for U.S. Senators: Pretend you oppose a bill for a particular reason (such as abortion), then get the change you pretend to care about along with some rewards for your state that you can use at election time.

Since the rewards Senators like Ben Nelson extract will likely be brought up by him at election time to prove how “effective” he is, you could argue that he is deriving quite a benefit from his deal. His actions are unethical and go against everything a legislator should stand for. A competent Majority Leader would have made the change to part of the bill related to abortion, but not the unfair give-aways for his constituents. Then, if he continued to oppose the legislation, he could call him on it. Of course, Harry Reid’s failure to do this makes you wonder what types of goodies the people of Nevada will be receiving.