Health Care: Follow the Money?

The WaPo linky is broken.

That article is written by Viveka Novak. She is well known as a Republican operative. When Mathew Cooper, then working at Time, was going to disclose what Karl Rove had told him about Valerie Plame's identity, Cooper co-worker Novak called up Rove's lawyer, Don "gold bars" Luskin and advised him as to what Cooper's testimony was going to be.
Rove then went and changed his testimony (attributing the change to "faulty memory") as to avoid a perjury charge. You should be skeptical of anything written by Novak.

Karen, why isn't single payer even on the radar in the Senate? Its because of the millions and millions of dollars in campaign contributions that Dodd, Kennedy, Brown, etc. have pocketed.

The OBJECTIVE fact is that single payer is the most effective and rational means of achieving true health care reform -- yet its never even been on the table because of the vast sums spent by health care parasites to keep it off the table. As a result, instead of a strong public option that is the "compromise" between advocates of the single payer solution and "conservative" democrats, we're likely to get the worst of all possible worlds -- welfare for the parasites that does nothing to contain health care costs and stymies efforts for real reform.

Oh, and don't forget -- Ted Kennedy co-authored "No Child Left Behind." He sold out our kids eight years ago, and he's selling out everyone now....

I'm not sure that even the FactCheck story is that straight. They use lifetime dollars to make their point.

If you follow the link they provide to opensecrets you can sort by election cycle which is a more accurate look I think.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=H&recipdetail=M&sortorder=U&cycle=2008

I posted this the other day on another thread. I think it has an impressive group of charts demonstrating the ties.

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/projects/2009/healthcare_lobbyist_complex/

I wonder what kind of guarantee Reid got for folding, yet again, to the Right? Does he have a written agreement, or did someone just grab his private parts, wink at him, and guarantee him more than 1 Republican vote, in the fall?

Derek you beat me to it. Harry Reid, giving us more of the kind of leadership we have come to expect from him.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32104253/ns/politics-capitol_hill

This is a pretty weak fact-check. It admits that the targeted senators took massive donations from the healthcare industry. Then it points out that people who support a public plan also took money from the industry.

Well duh, the industry (which opposed a public plan) gives donations in exchange for access and consideration. The 7 senators targeted in the ad gave in. Ted Kennedy, who also took money from the industry, didn't.

That means that the people who Kennedy represents can say "wow, Ted wants the same public plan I want despite all the money the insurance companies gave him," while those presented by Baucus can say, "Wow, that Baucus guy cares more about the money the health insurance companies gave him than about what I want."

The MSM has really sunk it's teeth into the Gates issue. That seems to be a topic they get, more than the confusing health issue, an issue Obama may understand, but cannot articulate in terms a simpleton can grasp.

KT:

The timing of contributions is relevant. And you're right that not all dollars necessarily buy votes, but I think it's fair to take the contributions into consideration when "our" elected representatives hold forth on what is and isn't good for the country.

In any event, thanks for the info. Now to encourage the superficialists in the Village to dig into this when interviewing the recipients of recent bags o' bucks.

Ivy_B, I had heard about those Sunlight foundation relationship charts, but hadn't viewed them until now.

Wow.

Thanks for putting up that linky.

There's another issue here too. Pols see a business that can be hurt and seek protection money. That side needs to be addressed too. Remember Al Gore's donation demand after an air crash?

Thanks for link, Ivy (link ran over “reply” thingy). Former staffers become lobbyists, yay. KT likely has a full plate but if only more reporters can get in the faces of those staffer/lobbyists and ask the “money questions”, literally. Cell phone cameras / youtube clips would be nice too.

I imagine the public option will be the price the Bushdogs demand for their vote, if it actually happens in the fall?

So, if I understand this, because some Senators didn't sell out the public (who demand a public option by large majorities) even though they received campaign contributions from "health care interests", we shouldn't guess that those who are selling out the public might be doing it because of campaign contributions from the insurance lobby. Have I got that "fact check" right?

Karen, OT but could you pass along kudos to Amy for her recent articles (pregnant teens in foster care and abortion wars twist) and ask her to toss us some “red meat” (no pun) from those here? I'll promise to be nice and behave myself (might be the only one but will keep word). Thanks.

Some excerpts from an article in the latest CJR:

http://www.cjr.org/feature/groundhog_day_1.php?page=all

"With few exceptions, like the fine series last summer by NPR that explained how a number of other countries handle health care, the press has done little to challenge this reality or help to broaden the health-care debate. Rather, it has mostly passed along the pronouncements of politicians and the major stakeholders who have the most to lose from wholesale reform. By not challenging the status quo, the press has so far foreclosed a vibrant discussion of the full range of options, and also has not dug deeply into the few that are being discussed, thereby leaving citizens largely uninformed about an issue that will affect us all.

Exactly why the press is reprising its docile approach to this debate is a complicated issue that necessarily involves the long-standing question of how journalists define their role in society—whether they are leaders of the national conversation or mere amplifiers of it. In 1993, Holly Taylor, a health reporter at The Berkshire Eagle, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, stood up at the annual meeting of Investigative Reporters and Editors and asked why the national media were reporting that managed competition was the only solution to the health-care crisis. Taylor told me at the time: “What I found frustrating was that everyone was writing about managed competition as if it were a fait accompli.” This year, it's the same story. At the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists, Duane Schrag, a reporter at the Salina Journal in Salina, Kansas, echoed Taylor's frustration after listening to a talk about health-care reform by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. “I was just struck by how accepting the audience was of a solution that represents an encapsulation of the status quo with the same players and the same current costs,”

One thing that is different this time is the Obama administration's strategy. Instead of delivering a specific plan, the president outlined eight lofty principles—including the goal of universal coverage and making coverage affordable—and is leaving it to Congress to fill in the blanks. (By mid-June, there were signs that Obama had decided to assume more of a leadership role in the debate.) The press has reported this strategy as Obama learning from the Clintons' mistakes. But this frame misses a larger point: the lack of concrete legislation to be picked over and explained—coupled with an accelerated timetable for action set by congressional leaders and the president and the dominance of rhetoric about how the “stars are aligned” for reform—have so far precluded a thorough debate.

Neither Obama nor the press have built a consensus for reform. It's hard to assemble one when the public doesn't know what reform actually means. An engineering doctoral student from the University of California at Berkeley and a Manhattan hairdresser recently asked me the same question: What is single-payer? And last spring, my journalism students at CUNY asked people on the streets of New York what they knew about the differences between a public-plan option and private insurance. “I didn't know there is a difference,” one said. Another added: “Public, everybody knows about it; private, nobody does.”

What a relief to know that the guy who stole my wallet after all those other people decided not to, may not have done it for the money.

Guys, the Gates thing is a big deal. Without knowing the facts, Obama pilloried the white cop, made the issue a racial one and said nothing about the propriety of Gates' conduct (whether he had the right to do it or not). That looks like he's not even-handed on race. And that's a problem, particularly for a guy who thought himself the right guy to lecture America on race.
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Moreover, and I know I sound like a broken record on this, this is not an isolated incident (so it's analogous to Trent Lott--his Strom Thurmond comment, while repellent, was unforgivable when viewed in light of Trent's other issues). Justin Barker, the white victim in the Jena Six case, was viciously assaulted by 6 black teens. They jumped him, knocked him unconscious and continued to beat him while he was prostrate and only stopped when forced to stop. Barack Obama characterized this as "a schoolyard fight". What was Obama doing euphemizing the actions of the black assailants?
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These two comments show Obama not to be even-handed when it comes to race. And coverage of the Gates comment should include Obama's Jena comments.
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Now I am sure I will be pilloried as a racist troll for saying this, but honest libs will know I make a valid point.

The fact check piece is very flawed. The medical industrial complex is giiving cash to people who support the so-called "public option" in order to keep single payer off the table.

As others have pointed out - we have models of different health care delivery systems from around the world - including our own failed system - which gives us a very clear picture of what works and doesn't work. Strangely enough, the single-payer system, arguably the most cost effective and efficient of all sytems is off the table.

A lot of politicians like to say that we we have a "uniquely American system" that we have to preserve. Let's be honest: The uniquely American System is a for-profit system.

The problem I see here is that the article assumes that more money= less support. While one would expect that to be generally true, it ignores the other reasons-attempts to sway, an effort to get certain clauses added or killed, even just an attempt to buy a seat at the table-that insurances companies might have to donate large sums of cash to a politician. While this article does kill the idea that more money always means less support, it doesn't give enough counter-examples-I only counted 3-to invalidate that as a general rule of thumb.

KT, you know what bugs me about this is factcheck.org's smug use of the term "fact" here. I think the discussion among the commenters is pretty much proof that all factcheck has done here is express an opinion. The ad wasn't misleading, even by ommission.

Now even public plan does not look good. Clyburn was asked by Ed Schultz why Obama was not talking about a public plan last night and today. Clyburn said public plan was still wanted by a lot of the house, and then said some were talking about a trigger..

The people at the town hall today did not seem happy about insurance companies.

As pafro said, the byline on this piece immediately calls into question both the accuracy and the agenda behind the piece. Using contributions made over the last 20 years is specious, and knowing whom the author is, intentional. As others point out, single payer has been kept of the table, and that is a significant victory for the industry. What I want to see is how much money those who vote for a public option get in the future.

This link has some good reasons for bluedogs to vote for passing health insurance. Nate has something similar.

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2009/07/politicval_calculations_for_de.php