Tweet
"Ohhhh Max", Agent 99 from Get Smart
This quote above is from a classic 60′s kitschy sitcom. It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad, that to this point heath care reform in Congress has been a joke. The people directly impacted by this reform are not amused. They are facing financial disaster if they get sick. It’s almost as if the powers that be are using health care as way to keep people down.
Yesterday, Marisa McNee linked to the quote below from this, her diary at the Campaign Silo.
My bold for emphasis.
As President Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system seems to hit one roadblock after another in Congress, he is counting on Senator Max Baucus, a political shape-shifter and crafty deal maker who is not fully trusted by either party, to help him clinch his top domestic priority.
Not fully trusted by either party is very disturbing. If neither party trusts Baucus, why should I? And after looking at his campaign contributions, it’s very clear why no one should trust him. When you look at the pattern developing with the contributions to Conrad and Baucus, it’s a pattern that I wouldn’t want for a sofa, let alone the people crafting heath care policies.
Add to it this.
Lobbying disclosure filings for the first quarter of 2009 reveal that five of Baucus’ former staffers currently work for a total of twenty-seven different organizations that are either in the health care or insurance sector or have a noted interest in the outcome. The organizations represented include some of the top lobbying organizations in the health sector: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Researchers of America (PhRMA), America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Amgen, and GE Health Care.
There’s a graphic that lays out the connection. Warning, it’s very graphic.
Baucus has served the public for 35 years.
In 1973, Max was elected to the Montana State Legislature. He served as a state representative from Missoula until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974. He was re-elected in 1976. Max was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978 and has served consecutively ever since.
It’s appears that Baucus has had 35 years of tax payer funded health care. That’s more the half his life since this NYT article lists his age as 67. I’ve been paying for part of his health care ever since my first real job in 1978, as have all taxpayers.
And now the money, lots of it.
According to Open Secrets, for the 2008 campaign cycle Conrad has received $537, 141.00 from Health Professionals, $524,813.00 from the Pharmaceuticals/Health Products industries, $364,500.00 form Health Services/HMOs, and $332,826.00 from Hospitals/Nursing Homes.
Taking a look at the same campaign cycle, according to Open Secrets Schering-Plough Corp, a pharmaceutical company is his largest contributor with $72,200.00, and DaVita Inc., a provider of dialysis is fifth with $48,350.00, Amgen Inc, a biotechnology developing medicines is seventh with 45,750.00, Aetna is eighth with 45,250.00, Blue Cross and Blue Shield is tenth with $41,850.00, and Kindred Heathcare is twentieth with $28,400.00.
Please note, in this diary about Kent Conrad, according to Open Secrets, DaVita, Inc. was his largest contributor with $65,900.00, and Amgen Inc, was his second largest contributor with 47,000.00. In that post, please note also that Amgen Inc is misspelled.
Now to Baucus’s FEC filing, it reads like a who’s who of health care interests. It reads quite similar to Conrad’s FEC filing which you can find here.
If I apply for a job, a lot of employers now require a background check. Shouldn’t we the people, as the employers of elected officials have the same requirement for money from lobbyists? Conflict of interest anyone?
Max Baucus joins Joe Liberman, Lindsey Graham, and Kent Conrad in this ongoing series of Heath Care Hypocrites.
Graphic by Millineryman.
8 Comments
Thank you for this excellent continuing series.
Your welcome Teddy, I’ve had a lot inspiration from reading the people who post here over the years, including you .
Max’s former chief of staff is Obama’s deputy chief of staff. Max is following not leading Obama on health care. Obama never was for single payer health care except for a speech at the AFL-CIO convention in 2003. What politician wouldn’t tell the union they were for single payer? So if Obama doesn’t even have that on the table or originally invited single payer advocates like John Conyers to the White House, he signaled that it was OK for Max to do the same in his Finance Committee hearings.
Max will concoct the same scheme that he did for Medicare Advantage Plan D. Full of Donut holes that must be filled by supplemental insurance. Sure you can still get that procedure, old fart, but only if you have supplemental insurance from Max’s big donors like Blue Cross/Blue Shield and New York Met Life greed heads.
Thanks for adding that about the chief of staff.
LOL
Somewhere around here is when some people who have little stomach for sausage-making get upset, throw up their hands and run away screaming.
We have to decide how much to fund subsidies to enable people to get insurance through a public option.
We have to decide on features of public option plans (a board of pros will do that).
We have to decide how much to fund other techniques to get more competition in the markets and to push prices down. I like support for not-for-profit and/or salaried doctors instead of profit pay-for-fee.
We have to decide how valuable the employer mandate is?
Remember, it ties employees to a job, isn’t portable and adds more money to the for-profit insurance business. Getting more people is only part of it.
So Kerry wants a 10 year waiting period for a public option. Kennedy wants to exempt the Congress from a public option and let them keep their Cadillac plan leaving the rest of us with the moped variety.
As Kevin Baker said in “Barack Hoover Obama” in Harper’s “health care is being gummed to death on Capitol Hill” by “aged satraps from vast, windy places.”
We want Single Payer and we want it now! None of this Bogus trigger shit, it would only betray the trust of the people who want Affordable Health Care.
The Insurance companies will never allow anything to happen to their golden fleece! They will scream and have to be draged into oblivian where they belong for all the people they have committed to death in the name of PROFIT/GREED, it is what is driving this whole health Care crises where 47+ million Americans have NO access to care.
Put the Bastards out of business, John Kerry should be ashamed to even float such a thing.
Thanks MM!! Recommended!!