Compromise or buying votes?

"I don't know if there's a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said. "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it's — doesn't speak well of them. That's what this legislation's all about: It's the art of compromise."    

Senator Harry Reid

As far as I'm concerned, compromise would have been finding a way to get even one Republican on-board with the legislation. Instead, this bill rewarded Democrats for toeing the party line. I've listed some of the deals that were struck below the jump. Personally, I feel that Reid's comments are a slap in the face to taxpayers. I wonder, how much we could reduce the national deficit if every piece of pork was line-item vetoed from Congressional bills?

-- Vermont and Massachusetts got $1.2 billion in Medicaid money -- a change that was described as a correction to the current system which exempts those two states because they have robust health care systems. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said that he requested and won an investment worth between $10 and $14 billion for community health centers.

-- Western states secured higher federal reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals that serve Medicare patients. The provision covers the low-population "frontier" states and applies to Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Legislative language defines frontier states as states where at least 50 percent of the counties have fewer than six people per square mile.
-- Florida, New York and Pennsylvania will have their seniors' Medicare Advantage benefits protected, even as the program sees massive cuts elsewhere.
-- Connecticut is receiving $100 million for a health care facility affiliated with an academic health center at a university.

-- Nebraska's Nelson won permanent federal aid for his state's expanded Medicaid population, a benefit worth up to $100 million over 10 years. Other states get the federal aid for three years. His state also got an exemption for nonprofit insurance companies from a health insurance company tax.