How Much Does Health Care Reform Cost? Ask a Lobbyist

An Earmark is defined as a legislative provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees.

Here’s what Sen Nelson snuck into this bill:

The state of Nebraska will have 100% of it Medicaid paid for with Federal dollars, meaning tax money from 49 states will have to pick up Nebraska’s Medicaid tab. This earmark dubbed the ‘Nebraska Compromise’ is being challenged by seven states as being unconstitutional.

But there can only be one Senator who receives the most campaign contributions from the Health and Insurance industry. And that Senator is…

…Drum roll please…

…And the winner is…

…Max Baucus, Democratic Senator from Montana!

A senator from Montana receiving all this money, how can this be?

Sen Baucus is the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. This means that any bill that goes through the Senate that involves finances must go through his committee. His committee, not surprisingly, dealt directly with creating the Health Care Reform bill. Now five former Max Baucus staffers work for 27 different organizations that are either in the Health or Insurance sector or have a noted interest in the outcome of this bill. Some of these organizations are PHRMA and AMGEN, both pharmaceutical companies. As well as AHIP and GE Health Care, both health insurance companies.

Former Representative Barbara B. Kennelly, Democrat from Connecticut who sat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, the House of Representatives version of the Senate Finance Committee, says that sitting on the Ways and Means Committee means that she never has to work at raising campaign contributions. Meaning the money came from different businesses and industries, not voters from the district themselves.

Every day the vote is delayed is another day that lobbyists can solicit Senators. Is that why Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican from Maine, and the only Republican who almost voted for this bill wants to postpone the vote until after the new year and says “…there is absolutely no reason to be hurtling headlong to a Christmas deadline…” according to her website: Snowe.senate.gov/public 

Is that why the vote will end the 25th straight day of debate, the nation’s second longest consecutive debate in history? A vote that took place on Christmas Eve, meanwhile the last vote to take place on this day was 114 years ago.

And what business does AmeriBev (American Beverage Association), a lobbying firm that represents non-alcoholic beverages, have to in the current Health Care Reform bill? 

The bill was supposed to include a ‘soda tax’ on beverages with high sugar content in order slow down the ‘dramatic increase in obesity in the United States during the past 20 years’ according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Many say cigarettes are highly taxed for similar reasons yet AmeriBev successfully lobbied hard against the ‘soda tax’. Meanwhile, 29 states in this country implement their own version of the ‘soda tax’, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit, private operating foundation focusing on major health care issues.

Another tax that was lobbied out of the bill was the 5% cosmetic surgery tax which was supposed to raise funds that would help pay for the bill. A 10% tax on tanning salons was implemented instead at the urging of the American Academy of Dermatology. Too bad the tanning salons didn’t have a lobby to represent them.

The AFL-CIO, a coalition of labor unions representing over 11.5 million members and National Nurses United, a union representing over 150,000 registered nurses once supported health care reform. National Nurses United now says the bill “…cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry.”

Is this the “Change we can believe in”? The change Americans voted for in November of 2008? Or just more of the same, more of the same suspicions of a one party political system.

Will justice be served? 

No, because justice can only be served if something illegal has been committed.

If you don’t agree with this article ask yourself this: would lobbyists spend over $3.3 billion a year if it didn’t work?