The influence of big money is everywhere in politics. Whether it’s in the primary elections, general elections, Super PAC spending, industry lobbyists, or donations from Wall Street, this is how our political decisions get made, regardless of who or which party comes out on top on election day.
In 2017, according to Open Secrets and the Center for Responsive Politics, the healthcare industry spent $547 million on lobbying. That is over a million dollars for each member of Congress, involving almost 4,000 lobbyists.
Nice work if you can get it.
Maybe it’s not so much money if you consider the size of our healthcare spend at $3.3 trillion. But, while not directly correlated, the size of the industry and the size of the lobby certainly seem to be mutually reinforcing. After all, the focus of all those lobbying dollars is not to make healthcare cheaper.
What does all this money buy? Not much for you and me.
Think of all the care that could have been provided with $547 million. It’s enough to insure a lot of uninsured people at a basic level. At $75 per visit, it would pay for 7 million kids to get their teeth cleaned once a year. Then again, I suppose, we would have the problem of all those unemployed lobbyists.
2017 Healthcare Lobbying Expenses – Center for Responsive Politics
| Industry Category | Amount spent | Percentage of total spent | Lobbyists |
| Pharma & Products | $277,784,999 | 51% | 1,480 |
| Hospitals & Nursing Homes | $99,630,303 | 18% | 813 |
| Health Professionals | $89,539,171 | 15% | 783 |
| Insurers/Service Providers | $80,740,374 | 16% | 880 |
| Totals | $547,694,847 | 100% | 3,956 |
A lot of money has been raised here in Massachusetts’s 3rd Congressional District race. As of March 31, over $5 million had been raised by Democrats in the primary race. With another five months to go before the primary, we could easily see another couple million raised bringing the total to over $7 million. With an expected voter turnout of about 60,000 people in the Democratic primary, this comes to well over $100 per vote.
What if we turned this around and paid people to vote? Imagine that you got $100 for showing up at the polls. You’d probably get a lot more that 60,000 people voting. Would that be such a bad thing? You could go to the polls, buy the kids some ice cream, maybe fix that tire which has a slow leak, or just pay the electric bill to get back on cycle.
Now, I don’t begrudge the candidates who have raised a lot of money. It takes a lot of work to raise enough money to run a campaign. I know from firsthand experience.
What do the healthcare lobby and our local congressional race have in common? What connects these very separate worlds?
The connection is that money is the enabler. It flows from wealth, power, and influence to politicians who spend it to generate votes. The conclusion of a 2014 report by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page that examined 1,779 policy issues over the past thirty years is that ordinary people had “little or no independent influence” on policy outcomes. This isn’t exclusively a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. This is an American problem.
As was once said, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Given the cost of the piper, regular Americans don’t even get invited to the dance.
Get government out of spending so much and the lobbyists won’t spend all that money to win the government’s business.
Huge healthcare lobbying because the government buys a huge chunk of the healthcare. With little regard for the results on actual health. Who wouldn’t want that customer?
Or better yet, take a conservative approach to health care and follow the steps of all the other nations of the developed world and go to government as single payer. It’s more economical.
Under single payer, does the government run the hospitals? Develop drugs? Data systems? If not, then those contractors will pay MORE money for lobbying, not less,
Under single payer in Canada for instance the government does not run all the hospitals but dose run some. It’s a mixed bag.
As for the development of drugs, the government of the USA already is responsible for the development/discovery of 75% of all new drugs.
If private interests want to spend their resources to lobby our government for business, that’s their prerogative. It is up to us, as citizens, to elect a government that is less likely to be bribed and be required to toe the line with open and transparent reporting. and accounting.
If you consolidate the power to hand out money, you are going to attract money men to that office. Once you get your single payer, who do you expect to run it? The true believers?
If you put a group of klutzes and aggros in power they are going to squander it and power will drain away from them. They would be thrown out in 6 months.
You write, “because the government buys a huge chunk of the healthcare” which is true. Last time I looked it was about 58% of the health care costs. So if Gov. stopped paying health care costs, who would that impact. Well first their employees, from of our military to people insuring we drink clean water (or at least their trying). Then we could stop paying for the health care of the veterans and others those that are disabled. And let’s not forget all the seniors in Medicare and the poor on Medicaid. If we stopped being they health care costs of these people, then we can get government out of the health care business…is that what you want?
That’s exactly what he and the rest of the extreme right Trumpist fringe wants.
Zero government. Third-world society.
Alabama. Mississippi. Arkansas. Kansas.
What I don’t understand is why such people live here in Massachusetts, where they are surrounded by people who want to live in civilized society and are happy to pay the price for that.
The people who want less government are not necessarily “surrounded” by people “happy to pay the price”. We would already have confiscatory estate taxation and much higher state income taxes (40%?), maybe a gas tax of 75 cents a gallon. All to give people free state tuition, free subway rides, free health care. But we don’t have that. I would love to see a Democratic candidate for governor run on some real “progressive” ideas and then the only polls that matter, actual ballots would tell where people are.
Less is a relative term. Less than what?
We have free K-12 education, roads. bridges, free police protection, free USDA food inspections…and so much more. What are you against, specifically, when you use the phrase
?
These guys don’t want to pay any taxes at all, and they don’t want any government at all.
Except when disasters happen in their own back yard (frequently of their own making).
Then all of the sudden they demand that the government be “efficient” and “responsive” and dump billions of dollars to clean up each of their messes. Then, when the money is spent and crisis is past, they’re back to their same old self-centered greed.
Paul Krugman said it well the other day. The lies from the right wing aren’t new, didn’t start with Donald Trump, and aren’t limited to Donald Trump. The right wing has been living and promoting lies for generations. The mainstream media is complicit in its reluctance to characterize these lies and deceptions for what they are.
“These guys” are also not limited to the right. There are plenty of neoliberals on the left who think that markets are best operated without interference from government and government’s role is limited to fixing market failures. The ACA is a good example of such things. Hopefully, that wing of the party is on the way out the door.
The supporters of the ACA never argued that government shouldn’t “interfere” with health care at all. The biggest objections to the ACA from the GOP have been:
– Government-mandated participation
– Government-imposed taxes
– Government regulation of plans
The ACA is, in fact, not an example AT ALL of what the extreme right wants.
I invite you to cite any “neoliberals on the left who think that markets are best operated without interference from government” — especially any who hold elected office.
The Democratic neoliberal supporters of the ACA believe in market solutions for health care. I disagree with them on that point. What the extreme right wants is another topic, not one I am interested in.
The extreme right is DIFFERENT from “neoliberals”. Just because you dislike the latter doesn’t change that reality.
Yes, I think most here know that the right and the extreme right is different from neoliberals on many topics. However, all three have faith that markets are a preferred solution to providing health care to the citizens of a nation. They might disagree on the amount of government involvement, with the extreme right wanting virtually none while the neoliberals want it when markets fail. In any case, they all embrace markets. That is their prerogative.
I believe that markets are not the best method with which to provide health care.
You are attempting to conflate two entirely different political forces.
The attempt is dishonest and I think you know it.
Two entirely different political forces can agree to similar solutions on certain problematic issues. Their difference is by degree, granted, but not approach. I’ve stated this clearly. There is no dishonesty in my position or my description of these varied political forces.
The extreme right opposes the ACA because of the government involvement in the ACA. The ACA happened in part because the “neoliberal” forces that you so loudly oppose supported it.
You cited the ACA as an example where the two are the same (“The ACA is a good example of such things. “).
Your commentary is inconsistent. If “The ACA is a good example” of anything, then it exemplifies how DIFFERENT the two forces are. Yet you assert that that it shows they are the same.
The GOP and the extreme right has spent the last decade attacking and vandalizing the ACA. The national Democratic Party (including its “neoliberal” faction) have been fighting that vandalism tooth and nail every step of the way.
The only time I see you admit that your attempted conflation is both false and dishonest is when somebody calls you on it.
The ACA is a market based approach to health care, endorsed by neolibeal Dems. Different camps on the right endorse different versions of market based approaches as well.
@ ACA:
Unless, of course, you join the extreme right in attacking the ACA itself.
In which case you, you support the argument I’ve made elsewhere that the effect of your commentary is to advance the right-wing agenda.
I am against market based solutions to health care, no matter who proposes them or what they are called.
@ “I am against market based solutions to health care,”
So you join seascraper, the extreme right, the GOP, and the Trump Administration in seeking to destroy the ACA.
But unlike them, Tom from Somerville, I wish to replace it with a health care system for all citizens that is not market based. There is a big difference that I hope you can see.
I realize that not all Democrats will agree with me in my efforts to get control of my medical care away from the private corporations. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut): has accepted $34,000 from Aetna and Cigna in their hope that he will protect their bottom line and their shareholders.
Over the course of his career in the U.S. Senate, Tim Kaine (D-Virgina) has taken more than $268,000 from the insurance industry since 2011.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Casey has been the beneficiary of more than $730,000 in campaign contributions from the insurance industry since 2004.
Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida)is the undisputed favorite of the insurance industry having received more than $1 million in donations from insurers since 1999. Since 2017, Nelson has received $7,500 from UnitedHealth, $5,000 from Anthem, and $5,000 from Cigna. Of the $10,000 from Anthem and Cigna, $4,000 of that was for Nelson to fight off progressive challengers in the Democratic primary.
There are plenty more all listed here
All of these Democrats want to keep the control of my healthcare in the hands of private corporations whose CEO has a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, not my health or well being.
Fortunately not all Democrats agree with the aforementioned list of Democrats who seem to think the the money has to come from somewhere, so it matters not where they get it.
I disagree completely
Yeah, tear it down, and it matters where the money comes from.
Health providers lobby to make covering their treatments with a high frequency mandatory for health insurance companies. The insurance companies are happy to comply since they just jack up premiums.
As I recently posted, I don’t think Massachusetts Democrats really care about money in politics as a serious issue. With regards to the 3rd CD race, I’m sure Dan Koh is a smart and committed progressive. But when you’ve raise $2.5 million ALREADY, you really have to question his commitment to getting money out of politics.
But you also play by the rules that are, not the rules you wish there were.
Not if you’re ignoring the issue. You are such a pillow of the status quo…apparently you have no problem with a key (if not THE) qualification to be elected into office is the ability to raise (or have) money. It prevents our system and it is not a way to run a democracy.
I don’t think it’s the key qualification and I didn’t say I liked it. I just don’t think it makes sense to unilaterally disarm just so you can say you stuck to your principles. If you don’t get elected in the first place you can’t do much about whatever other principles you have.
With the fascinating context in numbers provided here by Patrick Littlefield, who speaks from experience as someone who has thrown himself into the arena and put himself on the line to serve his country, we can only hope that we look back on this period of time as a sad but temporary chapter in our electoral history.
Dental care 7 million children or the perpetuation of a Congress bought and paid for by moneyed interests?
Yet again, we are making the wrong choices in this country. Only Democrats can and will change things.