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Health Care Industry Contributes Heavily to Blue Dogs
WASHINGTON - As the Obama administration and Democrats wrangled over the timing, shape and cost of health care overhaul efforts during the first half of the year, more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party's Blue Dog Coalition received came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries, according to watchdog organizations.
The amount outstrips contributions to other congressional political action committees during the same period, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit watchdog organization. The Blue Dogs, a group of fiscally conservative lawmakers, successfully delayed the vote on health care overhaul proposals until the fall.
"The business community realizes that (the Blue Dogs) are the linchpin and will become much more so as time goes on," former Mississippi congressman turned lobbyist Mike Parker told the organization's researchers.
On average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks the influence of money in politics.
The contributions came at a time when health care and pharmaceutical companies were mounting a campaign against a government-run public health insurance option, fearing cost controls and an impact on business. The Blue Dogs' windfall also came at a time when the 52-member coalition flexed its muscle with both the White House and the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives as an increasingly influential bloc in the health care overhaul debate.
At the same time, many Blue Dogs were also rubbing shoulders with health care and insurance industry executives and their lobbyists at fundraising breakfasts and cocktail receptions that cost upward of $1,000 a plate, according to public information compiled by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, which advocates greater government transparency. Since 2008, more than half the Blue Dogs have either attended health care industry fundraising receptions or similar functions co-sponsored by lobbyists representing the health care and insurance industries.
In June, as Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., who heads the coalition's task force on health care, publicly expressed the Blue Dogs' misgivings about the Democratic leadership's efforts, the former pharmacy owner was feted at a series of health care industry receptions. Ross has received nearly $1 million in campaign contributions from the insurance and health care industries over his five-term career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Calls to Ross' office weren't returned.
That month, the American Medical Association, which lobbies for health care providers and is one of the top contributors to Blue Dogs, came out against a public option.
House Republicans, however, tend to collect more than Democrats - including Blue Dogs - from insurers, health professionals and the broader health sector, the Center for Responsive Politics found.
Many of the Blue Dogs hail from districts that are conservative-leaning and have sizable numbers of Republican voters. According to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on government transparency, Blue Dogs often take positions that are favorable to the health care industry.
During the 2008 cycle, individual members of the Blue Dog Coalition raised a combined $6.24 million from the health sector. The average contribution to a Blue Dog Democrat in the 2008 election cycle was slightly higher - $122,370 - than the average contribution to a non-coalition Democratic lawmaker - $116,748, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
During the spring, the Blue Dog Coalition, which got its name when former Rep. Pete Geren, a Texas Democrat, said moderates had been "choked blue" by "extreme" Democrats from the left, met with the Obama administration and House leadership to discuss concerns about the tone and direction of health care efforts.
The lawmakers, many of whom hail from the South and Midwest, pushed "rural health equity" with higher reimbursement rates for physicians and hospitals in areas of the country that struggle to recruit and retain health care providers.
The Blue Dogs were also very vocal in their subsequent complaints that House leadership wasn't including the group in the legislation drafting process. Earlier this year, 45 Blue Dogs sent a terse letter to the Democratic chairmen of the Education and Labor, Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees, stating that the group felt minimized in the process, which is "especially concerning in light of the collaborative approach being taken by our Senate colleagues."
The coalition also sent the Democratic House leadership a letter stressing they would favor a public option only if industry reforms and greater competition don't lead to lower costs.
34 Comments so far
Show AllBefore people get their bowels too much roiled by the image of industry-supported Blue Dogs standing in the way of Obama's push for health care reform, we need to reflect that in this fight Obama and the Dogs are two dogs on the same team. As Bruce Dixon notes in a Black Agenda Report this week, these Blue Dogs (the freshmen ones of them at least) largely are the product of the recruitment and support of Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. And then there's the report of very frequent meetings between Obama and medical and pharmaceutical representatives.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/22/obamas-private-health-car_n_243115.html
And Edward Kennedy, already on his way to sainthood as the "liberal lion," was largely responsible (along with the Senate Gang of 6--none of them Blue Dogs) for the industry-friendly legislation that will seemingly be put forward as the "memorial" for Kennedy. Blue dogs: can you spell s-c-a-p-e-g-o-a-t?
I think that the betrayal by Kennedy on this issue may have been due to a desperation to accomplish something - anything - while he was still alive.
If I'm correct then that fact wouldn't excuse his abandonment of lifelong principles; it would just make him pathetic - almost as pathetic as Obama.
q
q: very perspicacious comment. I can understood Kennedy's motivation, under the spur of imminent death; and even Obama who also may be desperate for a "legacy" as I guess we all are; it's a matter of how far we will go to achieve a "result" as opposed to a legacy of a true fighter who went down with head unbowed in the struggle. That's the legacy I'd prefer for myself and I have a long way to go to begin to realize that.
toughest thing about being a fighter is THIS climate, is that you're taking on the whole masters of the universe's SHEBANG monster, which has morphed over time into quite the nearly impermeable cancerous network of military-industrial-complexity that, like cancer, is formidably good at killing off fighters, and, eventually its very host. i don't believe we humans stand much of a chance against it until we can quit nitpicking one another to death and learn how to genuinely cooperate in larger and larger numbers.... the divide and conquer rule of so-called free market capitalism has everyone so entranced as to keep us in disunity,insecurity and competition, which makes it easier i suppose for the beast to swallow us all in nice small, bitesize pieces.
Matangicita: Am I going to have to pull out my MYTH OF SISYPHUS again??? The closing word of Albert Camus' essay of that title uses the fate of Sisyphus to roll the same rock forever to the top of the same mountain only to see the rock roll down again: "The struggle itself...is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Existentialism is the only philosophy I find it possible to live (and die) by, and living by it I am "happy" no matter the monsters bent on devouring us.
I believe you are correct.
"Health Care Industry Contributes Heavily to Blue Dogs."
Duh!
To add to Jerry D. Rose's comment: The Democratic Party has never been and will never will be the friend of the working class. Every time a progressive movement whether be in labor, civil rights, anti-war, or health care, begins to align itself with the Democratic Party, that movement becomes ineffective and by and large dies.
It is a mistake which progressives and leftists have made again and again, as has been the various attempts to "take over the Democratic Party" or "work from the inside". All of those efforts to shift the Democratic Party to the Left have failed. How many times do we need to repeat the experiment to really accept the answer? Google around for the writings of Hal Draper and the lesser evil of the 1968 elections. Lance Selfa of the ISO has put together a marvelous history of the Left's interactions with the Democratic Party and the effects of "lesser evilism".
The fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party represents a different faction of the (capitalist) ruling class in the United States. They may clash on various specific issues like same sex marriage, gun control, or how much government regulation for various industries, but at the end of the day, they will represent the interests of the capitalist class. Obama is a prime of example of this.
The only hope, in my opinion, is to build a movement by and for the interests of working class people which is independent of the capitalist parties. This is not necessarily a (purely) electoral effort either. Anyone who has worked in Third Party electoral politics knows how ballot access laws are stacked against minor parties. Building a movement means taking the long view, as opposed to the hope of a more immediate sense of "relevancy" by aligning with the one of the capitalist parties.
It might sound old fashioned, but education and raising of a working class consciousness as well as an ecological consciousness is essential to the struggle for a more peaceful, compassionate and sustainable world.
WhiteRose: I loved your comment (and we ain't related!) If we can just get this message through to genuine heroes of progressivism like Dennis Kucinich, who persist in that "inside" strategy. Maybe if people read (imagine that) Draper's and Selfa's writings (disclosure: I haven't read them--yet--shame on me!) it would help get some "movement" in that direction.
Clearly this whole months long healthcare song and dance by the drug, hospital chain, and insurance, and AMA and the camp follower whores of the political class has nothing to do with delivering real access to medical care for the people. It is just an exercise of how much loot is to be taken and how it is to be divided up. Which is the only game the capitalists ever play no matter what the subject is at hand. Certainly now the CEOs of Korporate Amerika must be drooling as they see the criminals of the Wall Street banks having pulled off the biggest heist in human history and getting to reward themselves with millions in bonuses right out of the public till. And there's not a chance that any of them will face a judge and jury, which at least did happen in the Savings and Loan debacle in the 1980s. Or maybe they make invidious comparisons to the war profiteers with Haliburton having super big Dick Cheney as their personal inside operator as they grabbed the loot in tens of billions, as the theft of Iraq's oil wealth proceeds. And thus the gross disparity in income and living standards in the US grows ever larger and CEO salaries/looting is 100s of times larger than the income of the average worker. So the country's history began in war, looting, and grabbing and the central agenda has never really changed.
Blue Dog Democrats who take big bribes from the health care industry and sabotage meaningful medical care for the citizenry prostitute themselves.
Lets hope that they at least sabotage this garbage they are trying to pass now, because it contains no "meaningful medical care" for anyone.
If they are whores, lest at least hope they are honest whores.
I don't care who stops this attempted rape of the American people. or how they do it at this point, as long as they are successful.
henry seems aptly named, and I wish he'd go back to the 15th century where he belongs
Thanks for your good wishes Bob. But if you support this garbage I hope you go back to your Corporate masters where anyone that supports this...."Reform" came from.
the best cure for this problem and others is that the sheeple (I am borrowing this terms from another poster) should fire (not re-elect) any politician who does not represent and fight for their interest.
Great idea.....though that won't leave many that are there now.
Q: What is an imaginary number?
A: That's how many Democrats equal one Republican.
Yes? No? It's a new one, at least.
I rant again on this:
The Senate Finance Comm. is 13-10 Dem. v. Rep., and yet the 'gang of 6' (50% greater than China's Gang of 4!) is set at 3-3, a political edge that again the Dems have voluntarily ceded in a way that makes Republicans wet their pants laughing.
Again, no reform of any kind will occur until America first faces up to the biggest problem that it has and substitutes for its basic goal the welfare of its citizens in place of the National Security State that exists now.
If it wants to keep the last remaining shreds of the Republic that it has never before less resembled, America must cease being a 'nation at war' and return to the healthy status of a 'nation at peace'.
Every country in the world deals with future terrorism but only America declared war against it.
As I've ranted many a time, the Republicans are the party of fear and the Democrats are comedians.
I mean, really. Congress gave themselves their usual automatic pay raise this year, thanks to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. A Republican Congressman tried to talk about ending this automatic pay raise stuff, but the Dem leaders politically defenestrated him.
Aren't you laughing?
As a public service, locust points out that Congress has voted NOT to take its usual automatic pay raise next year, an election year.
So, Congress (in this case the House, where that huge Democratic majority works when they're not at recess or fingerpainting) can pass laws easily. When it's in the interests of those in Congress, but seemingly never in the interests of those they purportedly serve.
C'mon, you gotta be laughing by now.
just wanted to share this snippet excerpted from :
Don't Get Sick!
Thursday 27 August 2009
by: Gail Pellett, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted a poll to determine whom Canadians thought was the greatest Canadian of all time. It was not Pierre Trudeau, Joni Mitchell, Dan Aykroyd, Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Lorne Michaels, Oscar Peterson, Peter Jennings, Celine Dion, Neil Young, Keanu Reeves, nor Wayne Gretzky. It wasn't even Keifer Sutherland or his dad, Donald. No, it was Keifer Sutherland's grandfather, Tommy Douglas, who is credited with making sure that Canadians would have universal, government-funded health care. When Canadians are periodically polled and asked what they are most proud of, in addition to peacekeeping, it is their national health care system.
What irritates me - depresses me the most in fact - is that Americans seem so unwilling to learn from any other country. "We would never want to have a plan like the Canadians" is a comment I heard from an interviewee on NPR the other day. Sadly, this speaker has never visited Canada, because if they had they would probably witness that the average working-class or middle-class person in Canada lives longer, works less, is a tad wealthier and has better sex. And, of course, they have that single-payer health care plan.
Matangicita:
Do you think you could prove this? IF so please explain it to me. I know many Canadians and they do not, under any circumstances agree with you. They have had to wait for Emergency Surgery. I know one or more that have lost their lives due to the wait for X-rays, MRI's and other ways to detect the problem they had. When they go outside of Canada, their expense to continue insurance is more than most pay in an entire year, therefore, most have their healthcare taken care of when in other countries.
If it looks like a right wing agitator, it talks like a right wing agitator, it smells like a right wing agitator, it sounds like a right wing agitator and trolls like a right wing agitator, by Galee Juniper, it must be a right wing agitator! Or, at the very least, it must be someone who claims that "[she] has [delete "English" insert "Canadian"] friends from [her] work in [delete "the UK" insert Canada] for nine years. All that [she] met think their system is at the very least adequate and acceptable. [She] can give you their names, because [she is] not someone who heard something from someone who heard something from someone,etc."
Ha ha! Love it!
In the health care debate, the use of a living organism might be a useful "frame".
In the body of the US, there are these "blue" parasites that are consuming the blood that should be used to support the entire body. The stronger the "blue" parasites become the weaker the body of the US becomes. This leads eventually to the death of the body. It is probably a slow growing tumor and may take many years to reach the crisis stage for the body called the US.
Mike Michaud, Maine blue dog- blue balls for the health industry. Pant pant pant.
Let's keep those figures before the public nose, but of course one could predict that the Blue Dogs would receive more $$ from Health Denial than would Repuggs.
They they have to buck the party machine.
When the voters turn against the Demned in '10 and '12, the Dogs will have little support from a party machine that is sinking on the one hand and still mindful of their betrayal on the other.
And of course the Repuggs will turn them out of their seats wherever possible.
They cost more on this issue because their overhead is higher.
Firemen, policemen, soldiers, teachers and doctors are all critical. We heap praise and adulation on the first four for ignoring the profit motive and delivering their services based on the so-called "socialist" concept of actual need, not wealth. So why then is greed and profit the only permissible motive and organizational structure to determine who gets the fifth crucial service -- health care?
Signed: Lawlessone [for more irreverence, see resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
When all systems of representative government, capitalist and socialist, suffer from the corruptive influence of money and power on their representatives, isn't the problem representative government itself?
If modern technology makes the direct democracy ideal possible as expressed in our Bill of Rights, why don't we have it?
Actually, "direct democracy" was what our forefathers wanted to avoid. Under such a system, only the big cities would really have any power. Those in smaller communities and rural areas would be minimalized.
Representative governments come in several forms. Ours was suppose to be a "republic", but that was choked during Washington's whiskey war, and died of asphyxia, having it's life's breath withdrawn each time the federal form of government encroached upon state's rights. Lincoln put the final nails in the coffen.
Our present 'two party system' by all means is broken and will never 'fix itself'. The parliamentary system used by several other major democracies seems to hold a lot of promise....less gets done (a good thing sometimes), and more people become informend about what is happening. It is about the only way that we will ever see the Green or the Libertarian or even the Socialist parties withing the US actually get to have a say in Congress. To change to this of course would require an ammendment to the Constitution, OR the convening of another Constitutional Congress. Neither is likely to occur within the few years I have remaining.
Accepting that this change will not occur, I'd like to at least see some action to remove the barriers that exclude third party candidates from national debates. My personal opinion, is that IF any candidate is getting FEDERAL funds to run for office, it should be MANDATED that said candidate partake in all national debates in order for the public to hear what a person using our monies has to say. This I believe is achievable with a lot of grass roots activism. At least I'd hope as much.
wait i must reach for the smelling salts- are you really suggesting that big corporations are sending lobbyists to washington, and they are handing out money, and this is influencing how laws get passed? what a shock! who could have guessed?
Dolly: Give us the names of these people to whom you reference and their addresses. I don't believe you can.
I have English friends from my work in the UK for nine years. All that I met think their system is at the very least adequate and acceptable. I can give you their names, because I am not someone who heard something from someone who heard something from someone,etc.
It's good to know - and I wholeheartly take you at face value - that you're "not someone who heard something from someone who heard something from someone,etc." You are just simply someone who heard something from someone who says "their system is at the very least adequate and acceptable." Yeah, you're much more credible and, of course, much more honest than all that...ha ha
Why, this is preposterous! I demand that you take the implications back! Such highly moral politicians (and nooooooooo! that's in no way, shape or form an oxymoron) could have ever sold their vote, their opinions, their efforts or their soul to the very health care industry they were supposed to be protecting their constituents from.
[Sarcasm Off]
Now you cross your Blue Dog with your Lieberman pinscher and what do you get? A new mongrel breed that runs loose and raises hell.But at chow time, they line up at the same troughs as the Repugnants and feed off the same dog treats from the same lobbyists. You know them dogs won't bite the hands that feed them.
So, guess what? When you make the roll call of the Blue Dogs and the Repugnants, you will have a hit list for the next national election.And the Progressives will then be the swing vote--unless of course the lobbyists get to them during the next few months. The only refuge is unity supporting a single payer plan.