Affordable Healthcare Act -- Of, By, and For the Lobbyists ...

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Friday March 30, 2012 · 3:54 PM PDT

2012/03/30 · 15:54

There's a influential demographic that gets the little-mention when it comes to the ongoing debates about Obamacare.

A group that though little-noticed, WILL be impacted by whatever the Supreme Court decides about the "enforced-equity" clauses, written into the tomb that is the Affordable Healthcare Act.

Afterall this group, helped write those 2700 pages of inscrutable "fine print" ... that is our grand bargain, of congressional last resort.

Number of Special Interests Vying to Influence Health Reform Legislation Swelled As Debate Dragged On

by Michael Beckel, opensecrets.org -- March 19, 2010

[...]
During the course of 2009, the number of corporations, trade associations and other organizations that disclosed lobbying on the health care reform bills grew at an astounding rate, according to a new Center for Responsive Politics analysis of lobbying reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.
By the end of the fourth quarter when both the House and the Senate adopted versions of the bill, the number of clients had increased by nearly 300 percent, the Center for Responsive Politics found -- up to 1,541 clients.
[...]

[Image source: OpenSecrets.org 2009 Health Care Reform Lobbying Clients -- March 19, 2010]

These groups include: the American Wind Energy Association, Comcast, Qwest Communications, Yahoo!, the Gap, the National Rifle Association, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, the Knights of Columbus, the Professional Golfers Association of America, the office of the governor of Indiana, 1-800 Contacts and Hormel Foods [...]

In all, 1,750 corporations or other groups reported lobbying on health care reform legislation at some point during 2009. That is, 11 percent of all groups that lobbied the federal government last year lobbied on health care reform.
[...]

Hmmm, you got to wonder if these "advocacy groups," have a dog in this fight?

... seems like.

DailyKos member Lefty Coaster put the spotlight where it belongs in a recent post. This is what we get, when we let "corporate persons" have the run of ~~the place~~ our democracy ...

Thank you Max Baucus & Liz Fowler for turning the A.H.A. into a Rube Goldberg Machine
by Lefty Coaster, Mar 29, 2012

The Affordable Healthcare Act is a mind mindbogglingly complex Rube Goldberg Machine slapped together behind closed doors by Senate Finance Chairman Max Backus and Insurance Lobbyist Liz Fowler. They were guided in this critical operation on our healthcare system by their guiding principal: Harm no corporate profit stream. [...]
Poll after poll showed that the Public Option was popular with Americans. Rank and file Democrats were marginalized and reduced to the role of spectators in our own party. We watched the spectacle of an Insurance Industry Lobbyist and her Senate Patron high-jacking Health Care Reform, turning it into the Rube Goldberg Machine that the Supreme Court now seems intent on throwing out.

[Bill Moyers clip ... discussing the Lobbyist impact on the Affordable Healthcare Act]

If and when the Supreme Court throws out the Affordable Healthcare Act -- in part or in whole -- Who will lose out, in the long run?

The little-mentioned Insurance Industry Lobby, the Democratic Party who gave them credence, or the losers of last resort -- the long-suffering American People?

This is what happens when Corporate shills get an open audience, to try to solve very real Human Problems ...

We the People, just end up getting more of the same ...

And the root problems once again -- go unaddressed. By those influential interests that work for unmentioned, little-noticed financial backers.

When Lobbyists constantly get the run of the place -- it is We the America People -- that end up with the WORST Representation that money can buy ...

THIS status quo -- MUST go.

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Affordable Healthcare Act -- Of, By, and For the Lobbyists ...

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