Ben Nelson sells his soul to the insurers for a measly $600,000

A key issue in the health care debate is the establishment of a “public option”, wherein the federal government offers people the option of buying into a public insurance plan which would compete with the private insurance companies. Policy makers are discussing many options: setting up a national plan like Medicare, or expanding Medicaid to cover everybody, or a government insurance plan more closely modelled on the private plans. They are also discussing how to pay for it: premiums or taxes or a combination. Also at issue is whether the plan would be launched immediately, or only after a particular “trigger” is reached, such as a trial plan attracting lots of customers and/or outperforming the private firms in terms of price or other criteria. Also under discussion is the prospect of using mechanisms to protect the private firms, such as making private and public plans pay similar rates to providers. But the one thing that Obama wants is a public option of some kind, to keep the private insurers honest. The American people want it too: polls show support at around 70 percent.

Enter Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. He promises to oppose the public option, and to round up other opponents to such a plan. And why is he doing this? The insurers have bought him for $600,000.

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00005329&cycle=2008

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/sen-ben-nelson-d-ne-opposed-public-he

In less enlightened times, we would call this behavior...bribery.

Big hat-tip to Crooks And Liars for spreading the word.

This increases the odds on the passage of a health care plan via budget reconciliation, a process which only requires 50 Senate votes rather than 60. The White House is pushing Senate Democrats to follow the reconciliation path, or at least to keep that option open, in part to account for clowns like Nelson holding the whole process hostage. Apparently the proposal is to use the reconciliation option only if things aren’t resolved the normal way by 15 October: presumably the aim is to keep that threat on the table, just to keep down the silliness quotient in the Senate deliberations (and as we can see from Nelson, the silliness has already begun). Such a reconciliation move might anger moderate Republicans (the few we have left) and some Democrats like Conrad, but it also lowers the bar by 10 votes.

And to all those Republicans who are screeching that using reconciliation is a naked power grab: Reagan and Bush did the same thing to pass their bills, all with overwhelming support from those same Republicans.



In Robert Bolt's retelling of the story of Thomas More, More ridicules the man who falsely accused More of treason, in exchange for a government job in Wales: it profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world...but for Wales??



In that same vein: Senator, you want to destroy the hopes of millions of Americans to eradicate the fear of catastrophic illness...for less than a million bucks?