First we had the Louisiana Purchase where Mary Landrieu sold her vote for a special Medicare deal for Louisiana estimated to cost the taxpayers $300 million. Now, Ben Nelson got a similar deal for Nebraska. The new health care bill has the federal government permanently paying 100 percent of the cost to expand Medicaid in Nebraska, while other states will pay 2.2 percent of the price to expand the program. All of the other Senators who voted for health care reform are suckers who should have held out for their own pay-off.
This whole process of passing health care reform is disgusting. The first disgusting thing about the Democrats approach to health care reform is that there was never even any consideration given to tort reform which forces doctors to practice defensive medicine. The fear of being sued is why doctors order unnecessary test and duplicative test and send patients to specialist. Defensive medicine may account for as much as 25% of health care cost yet the Democrats never considered crossing their friends the Trial Lawyers. Tort reform should have been a starting point to reform health care but was never even given consideration.
The next most disgusting deal was the deal with the pharmaceutical industry to prohibit drug reimportation. This bill insures the pharmaceutical industry will continue to make their profits on the backs of the American people and that the American people will pay the bulk of the cost for drug research and development while the rest of the world gets a free ride.
This process stinks of corruption. We do not need to be lecturing Afghanistan or anyone else about government corruption and the virtuous democratic state. Transparency? A new way of doing things in Washington? Change we can believe in? Give me a break!
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