Today, in their session marking up the bill, he had this to say (HuffingtonPost):
Reacting to an amendment proposed by Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas) during the Senate Finance Committee's markup of health care reform legislation on Thursday, committee member Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) called his colleague a pawn of the health insurance industry."This is a very, very important amendment and it's a very, very bad amendment," said Rockefeller. "If there's anything which is clear, it's that the insurance industry is not running this markup, but is running certain people in this markup."
On Wednesday, committee member Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) unintentionally made this same point about himself when he begged for "at least 72 hours for the people that the providers have hired to keep up with all of the legislation that we pass around here, and the regulations that we pass around here, to say, 'Hey, wait a minute. Have you considered this?'"
Of course, he was talking about the lobbyists. And one commentator quipped: the lobbyists are the ones who wrote the bill anyway; why do they need time to read it?
If there is any doubt about this being a bill they like, remember what I wrote on September 18th: as soon as the Baucus plan was released, the stocks of the insurance companies and drug makers shot way up. There is also reason to think that Baucus himself, not just Republican members, is a pawn of the insurance companies -- given the amount of money he has received from them and the fact that he has fashioned his bill to be as kind to them as possible and still stay close to what Obama is insisting on.
Ralph
No comments:
Post a Comment