Healthcare Reform, part one
The Republicans have more than health care reform in their sights — they want a loss for Obama so crushing it will bring the administration to its knees and restore GOP control of Congress after next year’s elections. Republican Senator Jim DeMint, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
As the Republicans fired away, big business stepped up their lobbying and advertising attacks. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, announced a major campaign to crush the White House’s plan for a competitive public option that would allow consumers to choose between a government plan and private health insurance. The media is filled with messages aimed at moving opinions away from any change that might threaten profits.
According to The Associated Press, the drug industry’s trade group PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and the drug company Pfizer “reported spending more money than other health care organizations on lobbying in the second quarter of this year” - $6.2 million from PhRMA, $5.6 million from Pfizer. “Including its latest report, PhRMA has now spent $13.1 million lobbying so far this year. Pfizer has reported $11.7 million in lobbying expenses for 2009.”
This is part of the reason, as Alicia Mundy and Laura Meckler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, that “the pharmaceuticals industry… is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.”
Healthcare part two tomorrow.
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