In the last few days we’ve been hearing a lot about how Hillary Clinton used to be a major supporter of Universal Health Care. In the 1990’s she even developed her own doomed universal health care proposal for then President Bill Clinton. But now, she is attacking Bernie Sanders for proposing Universal Health Care/Single Payer as part of his progressive platform.
Well, Hillary is known for her flip flops and when you delve into the reason for most of her ‘evolutions’ it’s apparent that Money and Power are the primary reasons; especially money, for in our uber capitalistic system money=power.
In the case of her flip-flop on Universal Health Care Zaid Jilani over at The Intercept dissects the connections naming names and giving the figures provided by The Clinton Campaign.
But in the ensuing years, both Clintons have taken millions of dollars in speaking fees from the health care industry. According to public disclosures, Hillary Clinton alone, from 2013 to 2015, made $2,847,000 from 13 paid speeches to the industry.
This means that Clinton brought in almost as much in speech fees from the health care industry as she did from the banking industry. As a matter of perspective, recall that most Americans don’t earn $2.8 million over their lifetimes.
Hillary Clinton’s paid speech circuit came to an end as her campaign revved up. But for her husband, with whom she shares a bank account, it hasn’t. This summer, he was the keynote speaker at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the industry group that poured almost $100 million into trying to defeat health care reforms during the fight over the Affordable Care Act.
Below see the figures for the amounts of her ‘speaking fees’ to the Health Care Industry she received following her tenure as Secretary of State.
Hillary also tops the 2016 presidential field in donations from Big Pharma.