Specter switched vote on Medicare bill after last-minute deal with White House.

Is anybody surprised by this?

Thinkprogress:


On Thursday, a bill “that would have blocked a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors fell just one vote short of the 60 it needed for passage.” Politico reports that the White House pushed vulnerable senators to switch their votes in some “eleventh-hour” dealings. Officials promised Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and previously supported a similar Medicare bill, “an administrative fix to increase Medicare reimbursements for oncologists.” Specter denied that there was a “quid pro quo.”