The corruption of the conference committee

I'm not going to say too much on this, I assume it's going to be everywhere, but I couldn't let it pass by without some mention. (WaPo A01)

House and Senate GOP negotiators, meeting behind closed doors last month to complete a major budget-cutting bill, agreed on a change to Senate-passed Medicare legislation that would save the health insurance industry $22 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.....

That change was made in mid-December during private negotiations involving House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and the staffs of those committees as well as the House Energy and Commerce Committee. House and Senate Democrats were excluded from the meeting.

That's about $75 for every man woman and child in the US given away to the health insurance industry. How much were those tax cuts again for the $40,000 median income family? And this is just one case.