I was trying to recall. Harry Reid made similar deals to get Obamacare passed.
Recall the “Cornhusker Kickback”? That’s where Nebraska got a special exemption from paying Medicaid expansion. The US taxpayers are covering that $45 million on order to win the Nebraska senators’ votes for Obamacare.
And Sen. Bernie Sanders got $10 billion in new funding for community health centers in Vermont by agreeing to his vote.
And Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding; and Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida all won protections for their Medicare advantage beneficiaries.
And Louisiana got a $300 million Medicaid increase to buy their vote.
And Reid defended all of this as necessary deal making.
All the while, exempting Congress from Obamacare.
Now this.
A provision in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rewritten health care bill appears to benefit only one state.
That’s Alaska, home of one Republican holdout McConnell badly needs to keep the legislation alive, and her state might gain nearly $2 billion in federal money.
The language would give states with extremely high premiums an added piece of two funds the measure would create that together total $182 billion through 2026. The money is supposed to help insurers curb consumers’ coverage costs.
Analysts at the consulting firm Avalere Health and Cynthia Cox, who studies health insurance at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said Alaska seems to be the only state qualifying for the added money.
Avalere Health estimated the provision would mean $150 million for Alaska in 2018, $230 million in 2019 and additional amounts in subsequent years. Cox said the extra funding could total nearly $2 billion over the next decade.