I find it very interesting that of the dozens of different industry giveaways, pieces of pork, and lobbyist carve-outs found in the health care bill, Ben Nelson’s extra Medicaid money for his state has gotten the bulk of the fire from Republicans. Interesting it is the not allowing insurance companies to keep their anti-trust exemption, protecting pharmaceutical companies from drug re-importation, employer mandate carve-outs for unions, special excise tax carve-outs for some industries and states, special exemptions for certain physician-owned hospitals, or protecting hospitals from the MedPAC recommendations. With a target-rich environment, filled with corporate pork and giveaways, it is very telling that the fire has been directed at extra money for a state’s Medicaid program.

In general, I am against the idea of pork, and especially against special treatment for individual states–but as pork goes in this health care bill, this is about as kosher as I’ve could have ever expected from Ben Nelson. As a progressive, I just can’t get all worked up about the fact Ben Nelson made sure only his state got extra money to help poor people get access to public health insurance (oh, the horrors). Frankly, I want the federal government to takeover the funding of Medicaid in every state anyway. I wish the worst pork problem we needed to worry about in Washington was senators fighting to get their states more money for public programs meant to help low income Americans. Of all the many terrible things Ben Nelson did and could have asked for in exchange for his vote, the extra Medicaid money is by far the least offensive.

Update: Nelson is working on getting the same deal for every state or letting states opt-out of Medicaid expansion in 2017. Clearly the former would be a good change and the latter would be a terrible change.