John Ensign against health bill, supports money to bring doctors to Nevada

By Karoun Demirjian

Monday, Nov. 15, 2010 | 6:44 p.m.

Before Congress broke for the 2010 midterm elections, John Ensign had a moment on the floor with his old friend, the 2,000-plus-page health care bill, which he has derided as being unconstitutional, and again said he “would like to see this bill repealed, and replaced with real health insurance reform.”

But apparently, he’s OK compromising in the meantime.

According to a letter obtained by liberal blog ThinkProgress, Ensign successfully petitioned the Obama administration for almost $1 million dollars in health care funds to pay for more doctors to come to Nevada.

“Nevada continues to have an extremely low number of physicians per capita,” Ensign wrote in the letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, which urged her to give extra attention to an application from the University of Nevada School of Medicine to expand their primary care training program.

UNR is expected to receive about $960,000 under the health care bill to put toward funding medical residencies.

Ensign’s political discrepancies aside, those funds are sorely needed. This past Sunday’s installment of the Sun investigative series “Do No Harm” illustrated that one of the main catalysts for Nevada’s mediocre hospital care is there is a lack of adequate training options in academic settings around the state. The series identified UNR's medical school as one of the most acutely underfunded, where funded fellowships and residencies could help Nevada retain talented medical personnel, and perhaps improve the standard of care.

But the fact that request came from Nevada’s beleaguered junior senator does throw up a few discrepancies, not only about Ensign’s long-term professed hatred of the health care bill, but also about his stance on earmarks.

This particular health initiative is not the only area in which Ensign has been proactive in the recent past about trying to secure dollars for Nevada projects — but he is now one of several Republican members of Congress who have vowed to push for a moratorium on all special project funding in the coming year. The argument is that a ban on earmarks is a surefire way of reducing spending and restoring trust with the country, and it’s a bandwagon that not only Republicans have jumped on. The president too, likely feeling the pressure, has taken steps to make the reduced spending initiative seem like his own.