Columnist Jamala Rogers
The recent report by Common Cause exposes the stripes of legislators and their slavish groveling to health care industry lobbyists. Appropriately entitled “Legislating Under the Influence,” it’s clear that the lobbyists are spending money like drunken sailors – to the tune of $1.4 million per day since the beginning of the year.
Some legislators don’t mind Legislating Under the Influence (LUI) or Legislating While Intoxicated (LWI). But what about us, The People?
Common Cause is a government watchdog group that is warning us that if we don’t wake up, the kind of legislation needed for overhauling the health care system will never get passed. The industry has spent billions to influence Congress and since we still don’t have universal health care, they have been successful. Successful in the strategic targeting of health related committees and leadership of both parties to carry their profit-making agenda.
Tops on the list of recipients on the Senate side are Arlen Specter, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Orrin Hatch and Sherrod Brown, who have raked in an average of $5 million over the last eight years. On the House side, Frank Pallone, Ron Paul, Charles Rangel, John Dingell and Earl Pomeroy topped their list with a measly $1.5 million in the same time period. How can any of these characters speak truth to power when their slimy hands are clutching blood dollars?
A New York Times poll confirmed that most Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system, including the highly contentious proposal of a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. This will be the real battleground because if it was up to us, we would cut that middle man out of the equation altogether.
And therein lies the problem – the mega profits of the healthcare industry, especially the pharmaceuticals, are being threatened.
The Justice Institute acknowledged this area of concern during its local assessment of the 100 Days of the Obama Administration. A coming report on the event states that “while advocates acknowledge preference for the Single Payer (Medicare for All) plan, the dispute centered on strategy with political feasibility and urgency as moderating factors.”
President Obama has refused to put Single Payer on the table for discussion. The American people may end up with what is politically expedient rather than a program that will actually meet our needs. In short, we will get what the health care industry has paid to pacify us. Despite their whining about the rising costs of health care, the industry has managed to cough up $3 billion since 2000 to grease palms of legislators who are supposed to representing us.
The window for getting the health care reform we so desperately have demanded for years is slowly closing. The ranks of the uninsured, now estimated at about 45 million, are growing. We need to put some fire under the backsides of lawmakers and let them know that our presence at the polls will be more powerful than that lobbyist’s presence in the halls of Congress. If they don’t deliver our health care package, we should deliver their pink slips.
See the Common Cause report at http://tinyurl.com/mse67k.