Lobbyists played major role in health overhaul debate

The New York Times Prescriptions blog explores how millions of dollars were spent lobbying on health care. Although President Barack Obama has blamed lobbyists for helping to stall the legislative effort, "many of those lobbyists actually worked to support his health care overhaul, not oppose it," the Times finds. "Health care and insurance lobbyists spent more than $648 million in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money on elections and policy. That figure is not final; the center has not been able to process about 20 percent of the year-end lobbying reports. But even the incomplete tally shows that the money spent last year on health care dwarfs the amount spent on any other single issue in a single year."

The biggest spenders were drug companies, with $245 million on lobbying last year. Their trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also spent $26 million for lobbying and another $120 million to $130 million for a television campaign and grass-roots activity, an industry official said.

"The campaign against a health care overhaul was led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which spent about $144 million on lobbying. ... The chamber spent an additional $50 million on television commercials. Individual insurance companies, as well as their trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans, funneled money to the chamber to help pay for some of the commercials" (Seeley, 1/30).

The Politico Live blog notes that the fate of a health care overhaul is still a prime question on Sunday morning talk shows. "The American people do not want the president to walk away from health care reform, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday" on NBC's "Meet the Press." He later added, "The president is determined that we deal with the problems in front of us, and health care is one of them."

The blog also reports on Massachusetts' newly elected senator, Scott Brown, who said on ABC's "This Week" that Congress needs to start over on health care. "'I think [the bill] was on its last legs before I even got elected, because the Democrats even were upset at the backroom deals, for example, in Nebraska. And they want a chance, I believe, based on just what I'm hearing, … to go back to the drawing board and do it in a transparent, bipartisan manner'"  (Budoff Brown, 1/31).

USA Today in it's report about Brown's comments noted that he said "he supports Roe v. Wade and believes that states should decide the issue of gay marriage, not the federal government" (Kiely, 1/31)

CNN reports that Robert Gibbs said Democrats "are within striking distance of passing a health care reform bill notwithstanding Democrats' loss of their filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. 'We're still inside the five-yard line,' Gibbs said Sunday on State of the Union. … 'We're one vote in the House of Representatives from making health care reform a reality,' the White House press secretary said, positing a scenario where the House passed the version of the bill already passed by the Senate which President Obama would then sign into law" (Stewart, 1/31).

RollCall reports that House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, on NBC's "Meet the Press" said "health care reform is not dead and that Democrats are still determined to 'shove this down the throats of the American people.'" Boehner said that "Democratic leaders are unwilling to give up on passing the overhaul, despite the public opposition to the plan. … 'Republicans continue to [be] vigilant in opposing this,' Boehner said, adding that the 'American people need to stay engaged' (Billings and Brady, 1/31).

The Chicago Tribune/Kansas City Star report that Democrats "have settled on a strategy to salvage the legislation. They are meeting almost daily to plot legislative moves while gently persuading skittish rank-and-file lawmakers to back a sweeping bill. … Many have concluded that the only hope for resuscitating the health care legislation is to push the issue off the front page and give lawmakers time to work out a new compromise and shift public perception of the bill." However, eventually party leaders "plan to rally House Democrats behind the health care bill passed by the Senate while simultaneously trying to persuade Senate Democrats to approve a series of changes to the legislation using budget procedures that bar filibusters" (Leavey, 1/31).

---

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.