Health Lobby Still Plans to Stick with Health Reform

With Tom Daschle now selected to head HHS, don't think he won't be followed by a pack of lobbyists. Don't expect anything different in the House or Senate.

The pack of thieves are circling the wagons, and guess who might just be the target...

I suppose if you say reform you have to ask by whose definition and on whose standards.

Daschle has been in a lobby group lately and he is for vaccines and mammogram.

Surely we can't believe that his tenure in the US Senate led him to stay clear of the rafts of rubles handed out by the lobby groups, even under the cover of supposed change and reform.

What happens can cgange but only if you are wililng to stand up to the status quo and fight for your health rights, level the playing field, and get the agenda to truly be people first!

Health Care Reform Stays in the Picture; Health Lobby Probably Does, Too
By Andrew Green
Conventional wisdom had it that the current economic morass might temporarily sideline President-Elect Obama’s push to reform health care. But today brings news that a handful of influential Washington players might not be willing to wait.

Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and the chairman of the Finance Committee, today released a 104-page position paper mapping his vision of health care reform. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy is convening a spectrum of stakeholders in hopes of getting legislation together by Obama’s inauguration, according to The Washington Post.

And health care reform advocates are likely not the only ones excited by this news. The health care lobby — one of Washington’s largest — is probably already gearing up for a fight similar to that of the early ’90s, when the Clinton administration unsuccessfully attempted to overhaul the health care system. The Center spent a year documenting the millions of dollars and thousands of hours spent lobbying various players in the health care reform effort, culminating in our 1994 report, Well Healed: Inside Lobbying for Health Care Reform.

The landmark investigation ripped the lid off the special-interest hijacking of the Clinton administration’s efforts to reconstitute our country’s health care system. Among its findings: At least 80 former congressional and executive branch officials had gone through the “revolving door” to work for health care interests. Almost a hundred public relations, lobbying, and law firms were hired to influence the debate. Hundreds of special interests cumulatively spent in excess of $100 million to affect the outcome.

Now, 14 years later, is there any doubt that those numbers will do anything but go up?