Joe Conason: Lucre-Addicted Senate Democrats Are Blowing It on Health Care

[flpoljunkie]

Lucre-Addicted Senate Democrats Are Blowing It on Health Care

By JOE CONASON

If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year – or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the “public option” – then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption. The punishment inflicted by angry voters is likely to be reduced majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives -- or even the restoration of Republican rule on Capitol Hill.

Many of those now talking down President Obama’s health care initiative were in Washington back in 1994, when Bill Clinton’s proposals to achieve universal coverage were killed by members of the president’s own party. The Democrats lost control of Congress that November in a historic repudiation, largely because of public disillusionment with their policy failures.

Nearly every poll now shows the American people demanding change in the health care system, with majorities favoring universal coverage and, in many surveys, a government plan that competes with private insurance. But powerful Democratic politicians, especially in the Senate, are pretending not to hear. They adopt all sorts of positions, from bluntly opposing any substantive change this year to promoting bogus alternatives. They claim to be trying to help Mr. Obama gather the votes he will need, or to assist him in attracting Republican votes. They insist that the country can’t afford universal care, or that the public option won’t pass (before debate has even begun).

Indeed, many of the most intransigent Democrats don’t bother to make actual arguments to support their position. Nor do they seem to worry that Democratic voters and the party’s main constituencies overwhelmingly support the public option and universal coverage.

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http://www.politickerny.com/4188/lucre-addicted-senate-democrats-are-blowing-it-health-care

[flpoljunkie]

1. Common Cause lists the money the health industry has given to Congress since 2000

PAY TO PLAY: $1.4 A DAY BUYS A LOT OF VOTES

By nyceve (Eve Gittelson)

A whole lot of money is being spent in an attempt to derail true healthcare reform and maintain the untenable status quo.

This is the grim reality from a report released today by Common Cause. These special interests, all aligned against the needs of the American people, are spending $1.4 a day so that they willprevail and we won’t.

Health industries – including health insurance, pharmaceuticals and health products, hospitals and HMOs, and health professionals – have contributed over $372 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress since 2000.

Political spending by the health industries has increased 73 percent since 2000.

Members serving on committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over health care reform in the House and Senate received the lion’s share of health industries’ largesse. Committee members raised $178 million from the industries this decade – roughly half of the industries’ contributions to the entire Congress.

The industries engage in “switch-hitting” – shifting campaign contributions between Democrats and Republicans to win access with the party in power. The major health interests have spent an average of $1.4 million per day to lobby Congress so far this year and are on track to spend more than half a billion dollars by the end 2009.

http://www.standwithdrdean.com/LastChance