Nebraskans should be pleased that Sen. Ben Nelson was among a group of Democratic senators trying to derail a devious ploy to pay for health care reform.

The ploy would create a new government insurance fund to pay for long-term care.

The idea, originally proposed by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, has been around for years.

It recently captured the interest of liberal Democrats because it would provide a source of revenue for a few years. Premiums would be collected immediately upon enactment, but benefits would not start until 2016.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., called the Community Living Services and Support Act "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of."

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the act would produce excess funds of $73 billion over 10 years. After that, the CBO said, cost of benefits would exceed premiums.

Nelson; Conrad; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.; Mary Landrieu, D-La.; Evan Bayh, D-Ind.: and Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asking him to leave the program out of the Senate health care bill.

"We have grave concerns that the real effect of the provisions would be to create a new federal entitlement program with large, long-term spending increases that far exceed revenues," the senators wrote.

The basic concept of the CLASS Act calls for people to be automatically enrolled in the program unless they opt out. In return, they would receive benefits to cover the cost of assisted living or nursing home care, home care or adult day care programs if they became disabled after they had been in the program for five years.

Participants initially would pay a monthly premium of $123. The program, however, would only partially cover long-term care costs.

Advocates estimate the benefit would be about $75 a day, or just over $27,000 a year. The cost of a nursing home averages about $70,000 a year, for example. A home care attendant may charge $29 an hour.

Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of the program, it should be debated on its own merits, not slipped into law as a means to lower the purported cost of health care reform. Some advocates have even tried to pass the legislation off as a deficit-cutting measure.

Budget shenanigans like this are one of the reasons why the country is digging itself into a deep financial hole. Nelson and the other senators who signed the letter should be credited for trying to keep their colleagues honest.