Health care bill still contains too many sweetheart deals

WASHINGTON — Skipping through the Candy Land of the health care bill, one is tempted to hum a few bars of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."

What a deal. For deal-makers, that is. Not so much for American taxpayers, who have been misled into thinking that the sweetheart deals have been excised.

Not only are the deals still there, but they're bigger and worser, as the bard gave us permission to say. And the health care "reform" bill is, consequently, more expensive by billions.

Yes, gone (sort of) is the so-called "Cornhusker kickback," extended to Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson when his 60th vote needed a bit of coaxing. Meaning, Nelson is no longer special. Instead, everyone is. All states now will get their own Cornhusker kickbacks. And everything is beautiful in its own way.

Originally, Nelson had secured 100 percent federal funding for Nebraska's Medicaid expansion — in perpetuity — among other hidden prizes to benefit locally based insurance companies. When other states complained about the unfair treatment, President Barack Obama and Congress "fixed" it by increasing the federal share of Medicaid to all states through 2017, after which all amounts are supposed to decrease.

Nelson's deal might have escaped largely unnoticed, if not for his pivotal role on the Senate vote last December. The value of what he originally negotiated for Nebraska — about $100 million — wasn't that much in the trillion-dollar scheme of things, but the cost of the "fix" runs in the tens of billions, according to a health lobbyist who crunched the numbers for me.

Other sweetheart provisions that remain in the bill include special perks for Florida ("Gatorade"), Louisiana ("The Louisiana Purchase"), Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Utah ("The Frontier States").

There may well be others, and staffers on the Hill, who come to work each day equipped with espresso shooters, magnifying glasses and hair-splitters, are sifting through the stacks of verbiage.

Wearily, one might concede that this is, well, politics as usual. But weren't we supposed to be finished with backroom deals? Whither the transparency of the Promised Land?

During last month's health care summit, Sen. John McCain had the audacity to raise — "with respect" — the specter of opaque and "unsavory" deal-making, whereupon Obama reminded his former presidential foe that the campaign was over. Which isn't exactly true, of course, but point taken.