Reid Jams Through Monstrous Health Bill Stuffed With Special Deals

The Senate reconvened at noon today and resumed consideration of the Reid substitute amendment to H.R. 3590, the vehicle for Democrats’ health care reform bill.

Last night, just after 1 AM, every single Democrat senator voted to move the Senate health care bill past a Republican filibuster. Every Republican voted no.

No votes are scheduled today as the Senate works through the post-cloture time on the manager’s amendment. Tomorrow morning, around 7 AM, a vote on approving that amendment is expected. It needs a simple majority to be approved.

The New York Times has a good rundown of the expected times of the remaining votes, leading up to a final vote on the bill Thursday evening.

After weeks of fighting among Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was finally able to convince all the Democrats in the Senate to lock arms and vote for a deeply flawed health care reform bill that the American people overwhelmingly oppose.

For anyone still wondering what’s so bad about the Democrats’ bill, The Wall Street Journalhas a scathing editorial today detailing the increases in health care costs, the “[s]teep declines in choice and quality,” and massive increases in federal health care spending that will result from this bill. The WSJ explains, “These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.”

And how did Reid finally get all his fellow Democrats to support such an awful piece of legislation? Politico’s headline Saturday was rather telling: “Payoffs for states get Harry Reid to 60 votes.” The story explains how Democrat “senators lined up for deals as Majority Leader Harry Reid corralled the last few votes for a health reform package.” Politico writes, “[Sen. Ben] Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade. But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a ‘sweetheart deal.’”

Further, Politico notes, “Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding, another plus for Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide. All of this came on top of a $300 million increase for Medicaid in Louisiana, designed to win the vote of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.”

But there’s more. The New York Times explains a how Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus included an “inconspicuous proposal expanding Medicare to cover certain victims of ‘environmental health hazards’” that applies to just one town in his state of Montana. In addition, the NYT points out, “Another item in the package would increase Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in any state where at least 50 percent of the counties are ‘frontier counties,’ defined as those having a population density less than six people per square mile.”

But most interesting for many was, as ABC reported yesterday, “A Whodunit: The $100 million mystery hospital.” ABC explained, “Somewhere out there in the United States is a ‘Health Care Facility’ ‘at a public research university in the United States that contains a State’s sole public academic medical and dental school.’ We know this because in the bill Democrats released Saturday morning is a $100,000,000 check for that hospital (presumably there is only one).”

Well, late last night, someone finally took credit for this provision. According to the AP, “A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who faces a difficult re-election campaign, his office said Sunday night. The legislation leaves it up to the Health and Human Services Department to decide where the money should be spent, although spokesman Bryan DeAngelis said Dodd hopes to claim it for the University of Connecticut.”

So in the aftermath of this vote, we know that Democrats made deal after deal with taxpayer money in order to cobble together enough votes to pass a bill that will raise taxes, cut Medicare, raise premiums, and increase health care costs. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said before the vote last night, “[M]ake no mistake: if the people who wrote this bill were proud of it, they wouldn’t be forcing this vote in the dead of night. . . . The fact is, a year after this debate started few people could have imagined that this is how it would end — with a couple of cheap deals and a rushed vote at one o’clock in the morning.”

This is not health care reform, and it’s certainly not the kind of reform Americans were looking for. The Wall Street Journal summarized things well, writing, “Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.”

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