Health Care Industry Coordinating Effort To Opt States Out Of Health Care Reform

[ProSense]

Health Care Industry Coordinating Effort To Opt States Out Of Health Care Reform

As Congress prepares to pass the final health care reform legislation early next year, health care lobbyists are mobilizing legislatures in approximately 14 states to ratify constitutional amendments that would repeal all or parts of the new measure. “The states where the amendment has been introduced are also places where the health care industry has spent heavily on political contributions,” the New York Times notes:

Over the last six years, health care interests have spent $394 million on contributions in states around the country; about $73 million of that went to those 14 states. Of that, health insurance companies spent $18.2 million.

Overall, at least 21 states have indicated a desire to opt out of federal health care reform or block fundamental features of the reform bill, including mandatory health coverage. While Arizona, is the only state legislature to place an opt-out measure on the 2010 ballot, a significant number of gubernatorial and state legislature candidates across the country have also said that they are strongly “leaning towards” opting out of reform.

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The effort to repeal health care reform “began at the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona” and was latter “picked up by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a business-friendly conservative group that coordinates activity among statehouses.” As the New York Times points out, “five of the 24 members of its ‘free enterprise board’ are executives of drug companies and its health care ‘task force’ is overseen in part by a four-member panel composed of government-relations officials for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of insurers, the medical company Johnson & Johnson and the drug makers Bayer and Hoffmann-La Roche.”

Earlier this month, Lee Fang reported that Joan Gardner, executive director of state services with the BCBS Association’s Office of Policy and Representation and a member of ALEC’s ‘task force’ “played a pivotal role in crafting this anti-health reform states’ rights initiative.”

Fighting to repeal the bill and block mandates means they love it!

[rudy23]

1. Just b/c they're fighting the bill doesn't make it great. It means their fighting has been a success

Until the bill is signed, they're going to fight for every inch they can.

[phleshdef]

2. They don't go spending damn near 20 million to defeat a "huge gift" for them.

People claiming this is some huge boon for the health insurance companies have lost all credibility.

[SpartanDem]

5. It's all part of giant ruse to make us think that they're opposed

or at least that what I've told by some when it's pointed out how much money they've spent fighting reform.

[phleshdef]

9. Yea, its like some people actually believe the health ins. companies CARE about putting up a ruse.

Or that they would even need to. The astounding lack of logic behind that conspiracy theory scares me.

[andym]

3. Why are they fighting the mandates? very interesting. nt.

[ProSense]

4. Maybe

losing another 10% in profit margins, having to pay more taxes and gaining 30 million more customers in addition to having to serve those they would normally drop from the rolls isn't all that attractive.

[POAS]

6. bingo

[ProSense]

7. There was a chart showing this

but it was dismissed as propaganda.

[POAS]

8. Sad, isn't it?

I asked one of the naysayers to provide a link to a claim that the hcr bill is the largest middle class tax increase in decades and all i got back was silence.