Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States

[kpete]

Source: New York Times

Health Lobby Takes Fight to the States
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: December 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — Like about a dozen other states, Florida is debating a proposed amendment to its state constitution that would try to block, at least symbolically, much of the proposed federal health care overhaul on the grounds that it tramples individual liberty.

But what unites the proposal’s legislative backers is more than ideology. Its 42 co-sponsors, all Republicans, were almost all recipients of outsized campaign contributions from major health care interests, a total of about $765,000 in 2008, according to a new study by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan group based in Helena, Mont.

It is just one example of how insurance companies, hospitals and other health care interests have been positioning themselves in statehouses around the country to influence the outcome of the proposed health care overhaul. Around the 2008 election, the groups that provide health care contributed about $102 million to state political campaigns across the country, surpassing the $89 million the same donors spent at the federal level, according to the institute.

Any federal legislation is likely to supersede state constitutional amendments. But backers of the state measures say they want to send a message to Congress and also lay groundwork for fights about elements of the health care package that are expected to be left up to the states.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/health/policy/29lobby.html?hp

[Jamastiene]

1. I already know which part they will be going after the most...the Medicaid expansion.

They'll have no problem with the mandated new customers for insurance companies.

It will be the federally operated programs, especially the Medicaid expansion they will fight. I knew it.

[safeinOhio]

2. Don't state boards set insurance rates?

It's time we go after these boards to serve the people of the states.

[cutlassmama]

3. The fact that they are still trying to block the legislation means it can only

be good for the people of the U.S.

[laughingliberal]

4. They are trying to block, I'm certain, the Medicaid expansion

That's the one part of the damned bill that doesn't put more money in their pockets. Perhaps a little tweaking letting states set their regulations a little more lax than the federal law does.

[SpartanDem]

7. +1

[Doctor_J]

5. More like "death lobby"

:eyes:

[New Dawn]

6. The Wealth Lobby just wants to force the Fascist Mandate on us.

So that the super-rich get richer.