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Obama And Reid ‘Hocus Pocus’: Buying Dem Health Care Votes One State At A Time (New York Times)
Buried in the deal-clinching health care package that Senate Democrats unveiled over the weekend is an inconspicuous proposal expanding Medicare to cover certain victims of “environmental health hazards.”
The intended beneficiaries are identified in a cryptic, mysterious way: individuals exposed to environmental health hazards recognized as a public health emergency in a declaration issued by the federal government on June 17.
And who might those individuals be? It turns out they are people exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont.
For a decade, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, has been trying to get the government to help them. He is in a position to deliver now because he is chairman of the Finance Committee and a principal author of the health care bill.
Working for a 21st consecutive day, the Senate on Sunday pushed toward a final vote on Christmas Eve on the bill, which would provide health insurance for more than 30 million Americans. Democrats said on Saturday that they had secured the 60th vote needed to pass the bill, and a 60-to-40 procedural vote early Monday morning was the first in a series testing their ability to maintain party unity on the issue.
FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Deep in Health Bill, Very Specific Beneficiaries – NYTimes.com.
