Who's In the News Today?

by Tim Foley

categories: For Profit Insurance, Obama and Congress, Public Plan

Published July 06, 2009 @ 07:27PM PT

It's the calm before the storm.  With the July 4 recess over, Congress will once again be taking up comprehensive health care in both chambers.  There are a lot of balls still up in the air with regards to timing, and even more for policy.  The House bill is still more or less on track for a full vote by the end of July, but the Senate bill may be pushed back to August 7 or later.  Given the likely difficulty in reconciling a progressive Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions bill with a "bipartisan" Senate Finance bill, I wouldn't write that date in pen.

So before we return to our regularly scheduled debates about affordability, circus-like amendment process, and largely-ignored speeches from the House floor about rationing, socialism, and other Frank Luntz greatest hits, here's a quick roundup of who managed to make news over the holiday weekend:

1.)  Chuck Schumer will not be denied

Say this for the senior Senator from New York - once he owns an issue, he's not letting go.  Months ago, Schumer was designated the point man on getting the public health insurance option into the Senate Finance Committee bill.  Since then, he has blasted away at how non-competitive insurance companies are during a committee hearing, make himself the go-to guy for negative quotes about the "trigger", joined Sherrod Brown of Ohio and the president as the most frequent public defenders of the public plan, and even seemed to begin to wear down Kent "Co-Op" Conrad's resistance to the idea.

He raised quite a few eyebrows on "Face the Nation" on Sunday when he boldly declared, "Make no mistake about it, the president is for this strongly. There will be a public option in the final bill."  But he made the calculus behind his thinking even more clear in an interview with the Huffington Post that could basically be summarized as, "Democrats have 60 votes - what the hell are we waiting for?"  (His actual quote was, "If you did a consensus within the Democratic Party, you would find the level-playing-field public option to be the answer.  And now that we have 60 votes, it seems to me like we don't have to turn it inside out for something we don't like.")

Spoken like a man who, as head of the DSCC for the last two cycles, knows what he's talking about.

2.)  Wendell Potter will not be silent

Potter is the former Cigna and Humana executive who two weeks ago delivered dramatic testimony pulling back the curtain on the business practices of the for-profit insurance industry.  It's hard to forget his description of health insurance as "a Wall Street-run system that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care, and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it."

AHIP and others in the industry may have hoped that would be the last they'd hear from him.  No chance.  Potter is now a blogger with the Center for Media and Democracy, and he's already hard at work "call[ing] out misleading statements and statistics, outright lies and illogical assertions by opponents of meaningful health care reform-and to rat out the front groups that insurers and other special interests are funding to kill reform or, failing that, shape it to their benefit."

You can bet I just added him to my "must read" list.

3.)  The revolving door for lobbyists is alive and well, and working on health care

A frightening graphic in the Washington Post today details just how frequently the Congressional bodies who are now working on reform legislation are being lobbied by people who use to work for them.  As the caption reads, "at least 50 former employees of the Senate Finance Committee or its members now lobby on behalf of the health-care industry, in many cases for more than one client."  The graphic tells a tale all by itself, particularly for Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, who are now being lobbied by their former chief of staff and former health policy advisors, who represent many, many, many clients among Big Pharma, Big Insurance and hospitals or nursing homes:

We all knew that the forces of the status quo were well-funded, well-researched, and well-connected.  But I don't think any of us quite realized that in addition to their money, their influence and their access, they had one advantage that those of us at the grassroots just don't have:  the buddies of those who are calling the shots.

(Photo credit:  Atomische on Flickr.)