You have to wonder. Look at what WaPo's Dan Eggen reports today:
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drugmakers' main trade group, shattered records again by spending nearly $7 million on lobbying from July through September, the quarterly disclosure records show. The outlay brings PhRMA's total so far this year to nearly $20 million, just shy of the group's entire lobbying budget for 2008.
Other big health-care spenders in the third quarter included Pfizer Inc. ($5.42 million); the American Hospital Association ($3.8 million); the American Medical Association ($3.95 million); Amgen Inc. ($3 million); Bayer Corp. ($2.45 million); and America's Health Insurance Plans ($2.4 million).
Many of Washington's broader interest groups have also ramped up their lobbying efforts. The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is at loggerheads with President Obama on health care, climate change and other key issues, spent a stunning $35 million on lobbying in the third quarter, more than double what it spent during the earlier part of the year.
The seniors group AARP, meanwhile, which has aligned itself with Democrats on health-care reform, spent $15 million on lobbying from January through September.
The deadline for filing lobbying disclosure forms in Congress was midnight Tuesday, so it's too early to calculate aggregate numbers for the health-care and insurance industries. But the two areas combined spent money at the rate of $2 million a day on lobbying through the first half of the year, and the filings so far provide little evidence of a slowdown.
That money isn't sent by God to Capitalists as a personal favor. Nope -- it comes out of your pocket and mine no less than "government spending." So it's ironic that, even as corporations are pouring our money into their politics, the Democratic House is finding ways of having health care that includes a public option and spending less for it. The Washington Post has this:
And that's just health care. We've already been slapped in the face with the costs of privatizing warfare -- in dollars as well as moral standards -- during the Bush administration.House leaders have cut the cost of their health-care overhaul to around $871 billion over the next decade, Democratic sources said Tuesday night, and were working to line up votes for the package with the aim of bringing it before the full House early next month. The $871 billion estimate -- well under the $900 billion limit set by President Obama -- is the latest of several versions scored by congressional budget analysts, according to a Democratic aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The measure would include a government-run insurance plan that pays providers at rates tied to Medicare, the aide added.
