Unfortunately, while most Hoosiers slept, our Democrat Senator, Evan Bayh, voted for cloture to ward off a threatened filibuster of the healthcare bill. And our junior senator failed to bring home the bacon like fellow democrats, Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu.
The result, all Hoosiers will be paying a bigger share of medicade (healthcare coverage for the poor) because Nebraskans are now exempt from paying their share of medicade in the future, thanks to Nelson. Even better for Nebraskans, Nelson's agreement exempts them from such payments in perpetuity. So all those people being added to the medicade rolls under the healthcare bill won't be a worry for the fine folks in Nebraska, where "hope and change" appears to be working better than here in Indiana
We Hoosiers who pay taxes and our fellow taxpayers in other states will get to pay a little extra above and beyond the new taxes that will be imposed by the healthcare bill itself. This at a time when Indiana is dealing with a severe shortfall in state revenues, forcing Gov. Mitch Daniels to impose big cuts in public education and other state services to keep the Indiana budget balanced as required by our state constitution. Indiana collected 144-million less that anticipated in November alone. And the shortfall is expected to get worse.
Why wasn't Bayh, a self-styled blue-dog like Landrieu, in there pitching for some of the 300-million Landrieu has been promised for her state. Gee, did we get suckered, or what!
And you know what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to say about senators like Bayh who didn't get something extra in return for their vote..."that doesn't speak well of them." It is a statement that makes senators like Bayh look like a dunce...at least naive. It is also a statement that underscores the corruption of our political system by the likes of Reid.
Republicans must shoulder a share of the blame. They happily participated in the big spending during the Bush years when the Republican president appeared not to recognize the word "veto." And throughout the months-long process to get to the early morning cloture vote on healthcare, Republicans appeared impotent, not only in the numbers needed to filibuster the bill, but for failing to present the American public with a concrete alternative plan to be considered while Democrats bandied and bribed behind closed doors to secure the 60 needed votes.
What we need now is a good attorney to file suit to stop this monstrosity of a healthcare bill and challenge the inequity of its provisions, which will also strip Indiana seniors of the popular and less expensive option of Medicare Advantage, while seniors in three other states, including Florida and New York, will get to continue choosing between a traditional medicap policy and Medicare Advantage. Where is the fairness in that?
Several states ARE considering lawsuits. Indiana should also.
And Bayh should consider retirement. Constituents trying to call his office in recent weeks were greeted with a recorded message saying his voicemail box was full. Right!!! His office answered emails with a canned response. That is not the way to represent Hoosiers, even those who may not agree with him. We deserve better representation - Democrat or Republican.
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