Today, the British newspaper, the Guardian, blows the lid off the $380 million dollar (and counting) campaign that corporate interests are waging in out and out warfare against the President - intended to kill real health care reform and get a new federal handout for themselves.
The story notes that Congressmen and women are outnumbered six to one by health, pharmaceutical, hospital and insurance industry lobbyists.
link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
Over $380 million has already been spent trying to kill the President's and Democrats effort to reform a broken and corrupt system. That money has paid for lobbying, advertising and a tsunami of political contributions to members of Congress. The Guardian notes that Max Baucus alone got $1.5 million from corporate health interests for his campaign fund just in the past year.
The paper cites Robert Reich, former Clinton cabinet member, who sees a devil's bargain in the way the Obama team has given in on key reforms to assure some bill passes.
With or without the public option, one result of any legislation that finally lands on Obama's desk will be a huge increase in the customer base for insurance companies.
A mandate that requires individuals and/or corporations buy insurance is in effect "a guaranteed pool of new paying customers" for the insurance firms who will have tens of millions of new clients.
Other wins for industry will likely include no caps on what the pharmas charge for medicines. This takes a critical component of cost containment off the table.
The Guardian maintains that the battle over those massive insurance company windfalls may be over. The paper quotes Dr Steffie Woolhander, a GP, professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program who says: "It's a total victory for the health insurance industry."
The industry's vicious fight to block the introduction of the public option for medical insurance is intended to insure those new premium paying customers stay in the family. Otherwise most will certainly opt for the less expensive public plan, as will other individuals and companies who can't afford to stay with current providers as their premiums climb.
Incredibly, the Guardian quotes John Jonas,a key healthcare lobbyist at Patton Boggs, considered by many to be the nation's top lobbying firm, who admits: "It would be very naive to say they (the lawmakers) are not influenced. I think it's a morally suspect practice ... the system ... got more and more lax over time."
Jones ultimate assessment of what will emerge is "it's a bad bill if you think it's supposed to be a comprehensive solution to the US healthcare problems."