If you think Ben Nelson is just about an attempt to add language to the Senate bill that would send reproductive rights and women's health care backward, think again. Here is a partial list of concessions to Ben Nelson that don't have anything to do with reproductive rights:
A week before House passage, HuffPost reported that Reid decided not to include the repeal of the exemption but to go for it as a floor amendment instead. The move was seen as a sop to Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, an industry backer who had yet to offer his support for Reid's motion to proceed and who is a strong public supporter of keeping the antitrust exemption in place.
Allow states to opt-out of Medicaid. The central public option in both the House and Senate bills is the expansion of Medicaid. This expansion will cover 15 million additional Americans, almost all of whom currently do not have health insurance and who are low-income, with public health insurance. And so, suddenly, Ben Nelson wants to gut that, too:
The Medicaid expansion would "create an underfunded federal mandate for the state of Nebraska," Nelson said, arguing that states should be permitted to "opt out" of that idea and find other ways to offer coverage to their poorest residents.
So nice of Nelson to suggest those "other ways" before demanding the opt-out. Oh wait--you mean he didn't suggest any other ways?
Nebraska's governor, Dave Heineman, a Republican, has written to Mr. Nelson urging him to oppose the bill because of proposed reductions in Medicare spending and also because of the cost to the state of a proposed expansion of Medicaid.
Mr. Nelson has said he wants to change the bill to let states decide if they want to expand Medicaid, though he has not suggested how very low-income people would otherwise gain insurance coverage. Democratic leaders said they were working on a compromise.
I asked Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), whose objections to the public option helped lead to the new plan being discussed, whether he would have a problem with any of the options even if the CBO give them a passing grade.
"I'm not aware of anything that was raising serious objections about it, I think it was about, 'Well, that sounds okay, let's see how it scores,'" Nelson said.
"I am concerned that it's the forerunner of single payer, the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option," he said.
Yes, no objections to it at all. Clearly, he was negotiating, and talking to the press, in good faith.
All of these concessions are in addition to Ben Nelson's attempt to use the health care bill to send reproductive rights and women's health care backward. It actually makes Lieberman look like a relatively smaller problem.
It is particularly reassuring that virtually no Democratic Senators actually intend to do anything about this, except just give into Ben Nelson's demands. No moves toward reconciliation, much less eliminating the filibuster. No punitive actions toward Ben Nelson, just more campaign contributions for 2012 as he continues to climb the seniority ladder.
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