Health Bill Could Assist Four Cancer Centers
After months of noisy public debates over big policy ideas like universal coverage and a public insurance option, the health care legislation is getting down to the fine print. This is the time when powerful members of Congress customarily tuck in their pet projects, either to please their constituencies or as sweeteners to win the votes of lawmakers who may be sitting on the fence.
Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, a wavering Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, has proposed expanding Medicare coverage of home infusion therapy, a form of treatment for a variety of purposes that is championed by a medical entrepreneur in her state. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican on the panel, is seeking a health care tax break for any state that “begins with the letter U.”
But few proposed amendments to the health care bill now before the Finance Committee better exemplify the process than one that would help out the Nevada Cancer Institute. Known in Congressional parlance as a “rifle shot” — the narrowly focused tax or policy equivalent of a spending earmark — the proposal would provide more favorable Medicare payment rates to just a handful of specific medical facilities.
Three of them — a hospital under construction in Cleveland, a venerable center in Detroit and, apparently, another in New Jersey — are among some 40 “comprehensive cancer centers” that have received grants with that designation from the government’s National Cancer Institute. The young Nevada institute has not earned that status. It aspires to it, though, its Web site says.
Continued at the New York Times.com
My take - An earmark by any other name would still stink like a rotting skunk. These dopes are more isolated than the "Boy in the Bubble." Here's looking forward to the coming Independent Congress.
Still, it's comforting to see that, in the face of such massive & "Trans-formative" "Change & Hope," it's still "business as usual" in Congress, and that our "Representatives" will not "Change" until we all are in the streets. Here's to being told "What's in it for you!"
