David Broder thinks we should be applauding a health-care bill that stinks. He nevertheless acknowledges:

Forced to bargain for every vote among the 60 in his caucus, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did what he usually does: He reduced the negotiations to his own level of transactional morality. Incapable of summoning his colleagues to statesmanship, he made the deals look as crass and parochial as many of them were — encasing a historic achievement in a wrapping of payoff and patronage. The taint has rubbed off on the bill.

But really, it is much more than that. The “taint” has not simply rubbed off on the bill; it is at the heart of it and has created separate classes of health-care recipients based on the political sway of their state’s senator. Nebraska seniors will get better health care than will those from California, whose senators didn’t manage to snag any carve-outs or extra goodies. Imagine if an amendment were introduced that all states must have the same reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid and that spending for health centers and other facilities will be done by an independent commission (like the BRAC). How quickly before the deal would unravel? Well, that sounds like a fine amendment for the Senate when and if the bill returns to the Senate for a vote (provided the House isn’t forced to simply swallow the Senate version).

The Christmas recess, like the August recess, affords lawmakers the chance to hear from their constituents. There are many groups to hear from. Jeffrey Anderson reels off a list:

They’ll get to hear from people who don’t want to pay higher taxes, higher premiums, and higher overall health costs; who don’t want to lose their consumer-driven health plans; who don’t want to see colossal sums of money siphoned out of Medicare and spent on Obamacare; who don’t want a health-care system based on political cronyism (witness the shameless exemption of the longshoreman’s union from the tax on ‘Cadillac plans,’ and the survival of Medicare Advantage in Florida but not anywhere else). They’ll get to hear from people who don’t want to see a trillion dollars over 12 years be transferred from taxpayers to insurers; who don’t want to see deficits rise and the quality of care fall; and who don’t want to have the federal government inject itself into the historically and rightfully private relationship between patient and doctor.

In other words, there are constituents who hate nearly ever aspect of the bill, and lawmakers should understand there are few voters who share Broder’s view that this is acceptable, meritorious legislation.

What next, then? If Rep. Bart Stupak is serious about voting “no” on the bill with the Reid-Nelson abortion-subsidy language and has a core group who will follow him, Nancy Pelosi is going to have to go looking for votes to make up for loss of these votes. The job of ObamaCare opponents will be to make sure the bill’s noxious elements are so well known that Pelosi will run out of members willing to walk the plank. Can it be done? We’ll find out.

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