The Washington Post reports today:
The nation’s preeminent seniors group, AARP, has put the weight of its 40 million members behind health-care reform, saying many of the proposals will lower costs and increase the quality of care for older Americans.
But not advertised in this lobbying campaign have been the group’s substantial earnings from insurance royalties and the potential benefits that could come its way from many of the reform proposals.
The group and its subsidiaries collected more than $650 million in royalties and other fees last year from the sale of insurance policies, credit cards and other products that carry the AARP name, accounting for the majority of its $1.14 billion in revenue, according to federal tax records.
The AARP is not the only special interest group shelling out money to support Obamacare in hopes of future returns. Politico reported earlier this month:
At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform.
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The result has been a somewhat unlikely alliance between an administration that came into power criticizing George W. Bush for his closeness to Big Business and groups such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the American Medical Association.
And let’s not forget the health insurance companies. The Los Angeles Times reported Monday:
As President Obama’s push for a health care overhaul moves toward its final act, the oft-vilified health insurance industry is on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests.
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The specifics of the health care legislation are still being hashed out on Capitol Hill, and key details will evolve in the days ahead. Even so, there is broad agreement that the final plan will, for the first time, require Americans to buy health coverage, with taxpayer subsidies for millions who cannot afford it.For the health insurance industry, that means millions of new paying customers. What’s more, there are likely to be no limits on what insurers can charge, while at the same time the plan is expected to limit competition from any new national government insurance plan that lawmakers create.
Obama’s advisers are also getting rich from the legislation. FOX News reports:
A media consulting firm with ties to White House senior strategist David Axelrod has been hired to produce a multi-million dollar ad campaign touting the Obama administration’s health care overhaul.
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AKPD Message and Media, founded by Axelrod, along with firm GMMB, were paid $12 million by Health Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, a coalition that includes Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, to produce ads promoting President Obama’s health care reform.
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Obama announced an agreement with PhRMA on June 22 to achieve $80 billion in savings as part of his reform agenda. On August 8, a coalition of interest groups including PhRMA pledged to spend $150 million to help Obama’s overhaul health care this fall.
With all these special ineterest groups being bought off, it is no wonder that the big losers under Obamacare will be the poor and the hospitals that serve them.
Newsweek’s Stefan Theil reports from Berlin:
Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. … It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve.
Politico reports from DC:
House Democrats are using an annual spending bill to exempt home state interests from new environmental rules which the party typically supports.
At issue is the treatment of Great Lakes freight vessels impacted by proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to reduce harmful emissions. The rules are scheduled to take effect in December, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) appeared Monday night to have won an exemption for at least 13 older U.S. vessels threatened by the regulations.