DeFazio Releases Letter Claiming He's a Firm No

There's a lot of debate whether DeFazi is a real No or a fake one. He seems pretty firm in this letter. His problem is the formula for Medicare payments:

I voted for the original bill for three principal reasons: it had a public option which would get people out from under the thumb of the insurance industry; it had national exchanges which would give people lower rates and better coverage; and, after decades of trying, we finally fixed the Medicare geographic disparities formula which discriminates against Oregon and 16 other states. The most current version of the health care bill includes none of these provisions and unless we fix the geographic disparities, I cannot vote for this bill. We negotiated this change for months and we finally got an agreement included in the House bill and expected it to be in the final bill, but it has been removed.

This isn't negotiation over the terms bill, I reckon, as the caucus seems firm that Sunday will be votin' day. So it is presumably too late to reinsert that part.

It could, however, be DeFazio's demand for a separate provision, or some other payoff, or his insistence that he won't be joining the Suicide Squad.

DeFazio has little to worry about from the right, though -- he district is solidly Democratic and he doesn't seem to have a competitive race. (Yet.)

So I'm not sure why he wouldn't gladly join the Suicide Squad.

posted by Ace at 04:08 PM

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