Help NPR Identify The Health Care Lobbyists!

If you happened to watch ABC News' prime time show, "Let's Talk About Health Care Reform With The President," you might remember the moment right at the start, when the audience was asked to raise their hands if they felt that something needed to be done to fix health care in America. Everyone raised their hands! And no one seemed to think that the system, in its current form, should be left unchanged. And President Barack Obama joked, "Well, let's stop right there, then!"

But a week ago, it was another day, another room, and another audience. Specifically, 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building, where your U.S. senators were poised to get down to brass tacks on overhauling health care. And the room that day was packed with the sort of people whose motives may not be all that pure: lobbyists!

Enter National Public Radio:

When 22 senators started working over the first health care overhaul bill on June 17, the news cameras were pointed at them -- except for NPR's photographer, who turned his lens on the lobbyists. Whatever bill emerges from Congress will affect one-sixth of the economy, and stakeholders have mobilized. We've begun to identify some of the faces in the hearing room, and we want to keep the process going. Know someone in these photos? Let us know who that someone is -- e-mail [e-mail] or let us know via Twitter @DollarPolitics.

This is a great idea! And I wish that this enterprise might thrive. So, hie thee, Huffington Post readership, to NPR's website, and if you recognize one of those faces in the crowd, let them know!

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Comments

[VinceTeeter]

You can tell that recent history is not taught in school. Who were the enemies during the Sixties?? It was the oil companies and the banks. And what happened - we elected Nixon, and then Reagan, and then Newt, and then Bush. So now we can add Insurance companies and drug companies to this enemies list, providing anyone is paying attendion.

[Whitley2009]

We need both federal and state Lobbying Commissions where the little p*utas would have to submit their proposals for a review by another group of state-paid p*utas. Then, after careful reviews, a synopsis could be forwarded to the elected politicians for their consideration. No contact between the lobbyist and the politician could be allowed, and no monies could be donated by them. It will take some work getting the kinks out, but I feel it is a worthwhile idea. Lobbyist writing proposed laws would not be allowed. Any ideas, gang?

[fairness4all]

"No contact between the lobbyist and the politician could be allowed..." -- A very good idea. When did "contact" (backscratching) become normal?

"Lobbyist[s] writing proposed laws would not be allowed." -- We should have this rule (law) as a basic starting point!

ANY scrutiny of any lobbyists is welcome! The more the better!

Wouldn't term limits help to minimize the "contact" between the lobbyists (the johns) and the lawmakers (the whores)? I used to be against term limits, but since Congresscritters need to raise so much money to stay in office, I'm starting to think term limits might be needed - if for no other reason than to allow more citizens access to Congressional health care.

[azhura]

What shouldn't be allowed is for lawmakers to go straight to lobbying jobs straight out of office. That's where the real issue is. It's the ultimate good-ol'-boys club with the same actors in different positions.
I really respected my Senator Dick Durbin for trying to push bank regulation through and basically saying that the Senate was owned by banks afterwards when he failed. The rest of Illinois may be corrupt, but Dick Durbin really is a good person.

[Rope-A-Dope]

Don't slaughter me too badly for this post but I think most of the posts I am reading misunderstand the role of lobbyists in Washington. Lobbyists are there at the invitation of the government. They are the source of much of the information that is used to form policy, debate bills and even write the bills themselves. They are not a mindless satanic army of people that descend on the capital with Enron checks in their back pockets. They are invited.

Consider for a moment Senator Inhofe. Does anyone really think this guy is smart enough to draft a beer, let alone a bill? How about Michelle Bachmann? Truth is that most of the subject matter expertise for any piece of legislation is found in the industry that makes profit from that same information. In my opinion, this system is absurd. Because the people forming policy lack experience and/or intelligence, much of the information presented is bogus -- see climate change or ask Al Gore. At the very least, we should have a way to gather and dissect information in a credible way. Even then, the politics in Washington will never allow it to go unchallenged if it politically advantageous.

It's a pity we don't have some way of calling out the people deliberately messing with the data and the people. Say a bunch of organizations that can do research and interviews to find and report the truth. See the news media, filed under lack thereof. Sorry for post length.

[socalgal38]

I am sure there is a whole lot of talking going on.
In the 2008 election cycle, the sector gave $90.7 million, or 54 percent of the total, to Democratic candidates and party committees, compared to $76.6 million to Republicans. That difference is even more pronounced in the first three months of 2009, when Democrats collected 60 percent of the total $5.4 million in contributions*. Obama, who made health care reform a large part of his presidential election platform, brought in $18.8 million from the health care sector in the 2008 election cycle--far more than any other presidential hopeful. Money follows power as the industries ride the tides of Obama-styled change.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/diagnosis-reform.html

[claudiam]

Right on NPR! Finally, someone with the nerve to show the people that are standing in the American public's way of getting health care reform. claudiatucsonaz

[DrPneumann]

A retired health insurance executive — in a shocking but not terribly surprising admission — confessed Wednesday that insurance companies deliberately confuse policyholders and attempt to dump sick patients to plump their profit margins.

“[T]hey confuse their customers and dump the sick, all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors,” former Cigna senior executive Wendell Potter told senators at a hearing on health insurance Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

“Potter, who has more than 20 years of experience working in public relations for insurance companies Cigna and Humana, said companies routinely drop seriously ill policyholders so they can meet “Wall Street’s relentless profit expectations,’” Potter told the hearing, according to ABC News.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/25/nsurance-exec-confesses-industry-attempts-to-dump-sick/

[socalgal38]

What do you think this public option is going to do? Exactly what the insurance company wants. Dump the sick on a gov plan, kind of like a bailout, but we will be paying for it more and more each yr.

[tomasedison]

There is 'big money' in keeping healthcare from the people who paid for it. Relly big money.

[smchp]

May they all burn in hell. What a f**ked up system that these special interest corporate whores and their money take precedence over the will of the people.

[TJCole]

Hey there's Thomas Pynchon...!

[Bpeirce]

These Greedy Creeps and their companies need to be exposed, picketed and slammed.

[pissedmichael]

They look so. . . . . . Republican? So this is what the people look like who lobby for a system that murders people. Thanks for putting faces to them. Why are they so young? What's that about? Robotic. They also look very unhappy. For some reason, looking at this picture, I keep hearing the audio recordings of those Enron traders laughing about their unrestrained power blackmail of California. This must have been how they looked when the whole thing came tumbling down.

[sosi]

Expose the sobs and family and friends and ... These are cancers of society...

[grdavis1019]

W H O R E lobbyists. They'd sell their mother if the price was right.

[Marconiusrex24]

Lobbyists should have to "register"....like "Sex offenders"

[Yves Papa]

How come we don't know who these people are?
They are trying to have a huge influence on something that concern all of us citizens, heavily, and we don't have their names?

[FatJoe]

Awesome, so glad to see NPR act like a real news organization (afflciting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted) for once, instead of acting like a Republican toe-licker.

[BiffThiele]

He'd say, quit yapping and organize.