Politics and healthcare
The Pennsylvania race for governor kicked off yesterday with Attorney General Tom Corbett's decision to join with 12 other Republican state attorneys general to threaten Democratic leaders in Congress with legal action if they do not rescind the deal that won the vote for national healthcare of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat. Corbett and several other of the AGs are running for governor in 2010.
They hope to derail the deal and push Nelson into the "no healthcare" column before the bill makes it out of conference committee and back to the House and Senate for final approval. Since the Democrats had just 60 votes, the exact number needed for passage under the un-democratic rules of the Senate (but not the House), the loss of Nelson's vote could kill the expansion of health insurance to 30 million Americans who don't have it now. The deal with Nelson, part of the normal horse-trading in which senators fight for their home states, gives Nebraska (and Vermont and Massachusetts) additional federal assistance to pay their state share for the expansion of Medicaid in the bill to more poor families.
Corbett and his Republican buddies claim this forces all Americans to pay for Nebraska's Medicaid program. Yes, just as a Congressional decision to build a highway in one state forces all other Americans to pay for that state's highway. If building a highway in one state triggered a requirement to build one in each of the other 49 no roads would ever be built. States get disparate treatment from Congress all the time. It's a normal part of the political process. You benefit from it today, the guy in West Virginia benefits from it tomorrow.
The screaming teabaggers on the right are trying, with some success, to force all Republicans running for office in 2010 to pledge to repeal national healthcare if they are elected. They know they suffered a major defeat with passage of the bill this month, and know that national healthcare will be as unassailable as Social Security once it has been in place for 10 years, maybe less.
Until then, Democrats and progressives must stand together to vote against candidates like Corbett (and yes, Democratic Congressman Tim Holden) if they continue to threaten a bill that will help so many millions of Americans.