Excerpt:
According to The Washington Post, the health care and insurance industries spent money “at a rate of $2 million per day” on lobbying against health care reform through the first half of the year.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the biggest spender is the pharmaceutical industry, which spent $47.4 million on lobbying in the first three months of 2009, up 36% from the first quarter of 2008.
Lobbying disclosure forms, which are filed with both the House and Senate, do not measure advertising, grass-roots organizing and other efforts by special interest groups, such as Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, to influence the debate outside Congress or the White House. Total spending on health-care reform ads, for example, surpassed $100 million nearly a month ago, already making it the costliest advocacy issue in U.S. history, according to media industry estimates.
When a clear majority of Americans still support a public option, it does not take a rocket scientist, or perhaps in this case, a brain surgeon to realize that the companies that are fighting health care reform in this country do not have your best health interests in mind, nor are they spending millions to defend or defeat obscure political ideologies. They are spending millions on lobbying to protect their profit margin, which is made at the expense of their clients, and ironically, the money they are using to do that was also made at their clients expense.
While the various health care industries may be able to buy out members of Congress, hopefully they will not be able to buy public opinion.
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com/x-23316-Madison-Independent-Examiner~y2009m10d22-Health-care-industries-on-a-spending-spree