Sen. Harry Reid needs 60 Senate votes to pass his health-care bill and, as Jonathan Karl of ABC News reported last night, is attempting to bribe Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana to be the 60th vote by shoveling money into her state. His bribe takes the form of an increased federal reimbursement of Louisiana’s Medicaid expenses.

Medicaid — the government health-insurance program for certain categories of the poor — is a state-federal partnership. States choose the amount of money to spend on Medicaid, and then federal taxpayers pick up a portion of the tab at a rate determined by the wealth of the state. Louisiana’s federal match has historically been around 70 percent, which means Louisiana spends only $30 of her own taxpayers’ money to garner $70 from the federal government.

The structure of Medicaid finance creates incentives for states to spend carelessly. While a state secures all the benefits from its Medicaid spending, federal taxpayers pick up at least half the cost. Economists refer to this as the “common pool” problem. Each state creates a Medicaid program that is larger than it would be if its own taxpayers had to pay the entire cost. When all states behave in this manner, massive waste and inefficiency is the result.

Nearly half of the federal funds that are disbursed to states are channeled through the Medicaid reimbursement. Medicaid is the fastest-growing component of state budgets, and this growth creates enormous fiscal strain on most state budgets. During the bailout mania in the early days of the Obama administration, one of the key bailouts was of state Medicaid programs. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal government increased each state’s Medicaid reimbursement by at least 6.2 percentage points.

And now, Harry Reid is attempting to buy Ms. Landrieu’s vote by raising the reimbursement rate even higher in her state. What will be the result? In researching the impact of the federal reimbursement on state behavior, I found one prior example of a state receiving a radical increase in its Medicaid reimbursement.

As part of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, the effective federal match for the state of Alaska increased 50 percent; the federal government increased its payment from $1 to $1.50 for each $1 of Alaskan Medicaid spending. Alaska’s policymakers responded to the increased federal payment by dramatically increasing both population coverage and Medicaid payments per beneficiary. As a result, per capita Medicaid spending in Alaska grew more than three times as fast as the national average.

If Harry Reid’s bill passes, Louisiana’s reimbursement will exceed 80 percent. What incentive will Louisiana have to make sensible reductions to its Medicaid program when each $1 that it cuts will result in a loss of at least $4 in federal funds? While the increased federal subsidy provides states a short-term boost to their budgetary situations, it sets the stage for long-term fiscal catastrophe by incentivizing states to expand their programs beyond sustainability.

When the federal government is running record-setting budget deficits, encouraging states to become further dependent on the federal government for bailouts is beyond fiscal irresponsibility. During recessions, governments should evaluate their priorities and make appropriate cuts to both payroll and services. Recessions should not represent opportunities to bribe politicians from economically distressed states to pass a massive overhaul of our country’s health-care system. It certainly makes one doubt that Reid’s health-care-reform package is a genuinely good idea when he has to resort to kickbacks to even garner the support of his own caucus.

– Brian Blase is a Ph.D. candidate in economics at George Mason University.