Ned Lamont can close the sale this week by pounding the Lieberman/Aetna(insurance industry)/big pharma axis of evil.
The health insurer, Aetna has its corporate headquarters in Hartford Connecticut. Joe and Hadassah Lieberman as most of you know, are on the "payroll" of big pharma and the health insurance industry.
Joe Lieberman is not someone who gives a rat's ass about the healthcare catastrophe facing the citizens of Connecticut or the people of the United States.
Remember this is the guy who as the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee signed off--make that voted to approve--Brownie as director of FEMA.
Joe Lieberman cares about one thing, and one thing only: getting Joe Lieberman six more years in the United States Senate. Period.
Back to Aetna. Aetna, is being sued by a consumer group for selling a scam insurance product.
A consumer advocacy group filed a lawsuit Wednesday against health insurer Aetna Inc., one of its subsidiaries and the state Department of Insurance, hoping to stop the sale of new health insurance plans it claims are a scam.
Phil Wheeler, president of Citizens for Economic Opportunity, said the state is allowing Aetna to sell plans to employers that are designed to mislead workers into believing they have adequate coverage when they may receive only $1,000 in annual maximum benefits.
. . ."These plans are designed not to be there when you need them," Wheeler said at a news conference. "It's like having an empty fire extinguisher on the wall."
http://www.chron.com/...
Stupid me, I thought United States Senators were supposed to at least speak out against these fraudulent business practices.
But Joe and Hadassah Lieberman are on the corrupt payroll of big pharma and the insurance industry. So don't expect Joe Lieberman to bite the hand that feeds him.
The dirty dealings of Aetna have already become an issue in the Connecticut Gubernatorial race.
Aetna Policy Becomes Issue in Conn. Gubernatorial Campaign
Connecticut Democratic gubernatorial candidate John DeStefano has questioned Gov. M. Jodi Rell's involvement in the state's approval of a health insurance program that's become the subject of a lawsuit.
The accusation clearly rankled Rell, who said the criticism "sank to a new low.''
DeStefano said a state worker told his campaign the Department of Insurance approved the "limited benefits coverage'' plan by Aetna Inc., only after Rell met with Aetna's then-CEO John W. Rowe and after her office put pressure on the agency.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/...
Lest anyone think that Joe Lieberman is on the side of the people of the state of Connecticut, you should know about the sordid past of one of his honored benefactors, Billy Tauzin
And he [Lieberman] continues to attract Republican and conservative money, getting contributions from Joseph diGenova, a well-connected Washington attorney, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, former Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin, now president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and Richard Scaife, publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. [Note: in the interest of fairness, Lieberman returned the Scaife money. But interesting that Scaife thought he could put Joe on the payroll]
http://www.courant.com/...
This is all you need to know about Billy Tauzin, one of the chief architects of Medicare D, the tax-payer funded giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry.
Retiring Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., who stepped down earlier this year as chairman of the House committee that regulates the pharmaceutical industry, will become the new president and CEO of the drug industry's top lobbying group.
Tauzin will begin work Jan. 3 heading the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a powerful trade group that marshaled an army of lobbyists last year to successfully support a bill overhauling Medicare and establishing the first prescription drug benefit for seniors. Tauzin was a co-sponsor, and President Bush signed the bill into law a year ago.
http://www.usatoday.com/...
Here's everything you need to know about husband and wife Lieberman, and their involvement on the side of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries against the desperate healthcare needs of the American people. It's courtesy of Alternet:
Yet, perhaps nowhere is Lieberman's hypocrisy and self-serving ideology more obvious than on the issue of health care. While he routinely claims to be in favor of expanding access -- which sadly has become a luxury in our society due to the economic policies corporatized automatons like Lieberman have supported -- he hasn't walked the walk, as the Hartford Courant noted in 1994:
... He also broke with Clinton on health care. Instead of favoring universal coverage and employer mandates, Lieberman sided first with a conservative plan favored by insurance interests -- who have given heavily to his campaign. The plan would cover fewer people and require less government involvement.
More recently, Lieberman skipped town to avoid having to commit himself to President Bush's "Medicare Reform" bill, which is perhaps the stupidest law ever passed by Congress. It bans the importation of drugs from Canada, and prohibits the government from negotiating bulk discounts with prescription drug companies, all of which ensures that prices will stay artificially high so Pfizer executives can afford that extra trip to Bora Bora.
Why wouldn't a "Democrat" oppose such a giveaway? In Lieberman's case, perhaps it's because he's been a top recipient of health care and pharmaceutical money since his election to Congress. Just to look at his numbers from 2006, Lieberman's received $611,500 from "health professionals," $457,019 from "insurance" interests and $240,740 from "pharmaceuticals/health products," according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Lieberman's No. 3 and No. 4 supporters, respectively, are Purdue Pharma and Aetna.
But Joe himself hasn't been the only one in the Lieberman clan to benefit from the largesse of these bloated behemoths. In a move that no doubt had no ulterior motives, his wife, Hadassah Lieberman, was hired in early 2005 by the health and pharmaceuticals division of public relations giant Hill & Knowlton. She was given the ambiguous title of "senior counselor," and Lieberman's staff adamantly denied she was a lobbyist (she technically did not have to register as one). Yet, due to the controversy, she quit earlier this year.
According to Joe Conason, however, in a column titled "In Bed With Big Pharma," Hadassah was paid $77,000 while employed there without any evidence of her actually having done anything. And of course by pure coincidence, a client of Hill & Knowlton's, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, benefited a month after she was hired.
In April of 2005, her husband introduced a bill into the Senate to offer billions of dollars of new "incentives" to GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies, to "persuade them to make more new vaccines" (apparently billions of dollars in profit don't provide quite the incentive they used to).
In other words: It's good to be a Lieberman.
http://www.alternet.org/...
Ned Lamont, time to wrap Aetna around his smarmy, hypocritical neck.