And we’re sitting here wondering why our progressive healthcare reform goals were flushed down the toilet and why back-room "negotiations" are happening in the dead of night and away from CSPAN in flagrant disregard of the promises made by... oh, only Barack Obama himself.
Raw Story reports today that Barack Obama received an astounding $20,175,303 from the health care industry during the 2008 election cycle.
"A new figure, based on an exclusive analysis created for Raw Story by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows that President Obama received a staggering $20,175,303 from the healthcare industry during the 2008 election cycle, nearly three times the amount of his presidential rival John McCain. McCain took in $7,758,289, the Center found."
That kind of payoff buys you as seat at the table, and locks those pesky agitators (like nurses and dissenting doctors) out of the room for sure.
In the Raw Story piece, historian Norman Solomon, who was a Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention, called Obama’s sellout on healthcare since taking office "shameful."
"The funding from the healthcare industry to the Obama campaign, in retrospect, was not misplaced," Solomon said. "It appears, based on policy, that those funders are getting what they would’ve hoped for."
"Let me put it this way," he added. "Single-payer advocates literally couldn’t get into the White House. And you have [chief pharmaceutical industry lobbyist and former Republican congressman] Billy Tauzin and Big Pharma and all of these in-depth strategy meetings in the White House in mid-2009 cutting deals. And I think it’s shameful."
As long as big pharma and industry can buy off Presidential candidates, we’ll never get the healthcare reform – sorry, "health insurance reform" we are overwhelmingly demanding as Americans.
Candidate Obama got HALF A BILLION dollars online from people like you and me. There was no reason for him to take $20 million in blood money from the very interests that have been and will now continue to exploit Americans.