Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, has been under fire in recent days for winning some plum provisions for his home state in exchange for voting for his party’s big health care legislation. But in a statement on Thursday, Mr. Nelson said he would fight for all states to get the same benefits as Nebraska — a move that some Senate colleagues had predicted as inevitable.
When Mr. Nelson was negotiating with the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, over whether he would support the health care bill, he demanded that the federal government pick up the total cost of a proposed Medicaid expansion in Nebraska, even though other states would eventually have to share the cost of expanding their Medicaid programs.
Mr. Reid agreed and inserted a provision for the federal government to pay Nebraska’s new Medicaid costs indefinitely. But that provision has had its own political cost, with Republicans accusing Democrats of bribing Mr. Nelson with a “sweetheart deal” to win his vote.
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/nelson-to-fight-for-all-states/?hp