You can opensecrets.org
The health industry (ins, drug cos providers) have been spending $1.4 million per DAY lobbying on this for months. It bought them the ability to draft Obamacare, apparently, including Obama using his influence to push a cap on how much pharma would have to let drug priced be renegotiated down, and a ban on being able to buy drugs from Canada etc. Pharma is spending $150 million to sell us on Obamacare in ads and there is a huge push from the rest of them, too. As for insurance companies, who do you think makes a killing with a bill that by law forces 300 million people to buy insurance product they don’t want? Insurance cos hope the ‘public option’ doesn’t make it, but are drooling over Obamacare.
As for the sellouts on the GOP side, you can tell them by their satisfaction with most of Obamacare, just so long as the ‘public option’ is gone. Grassley, for example, is making a huge deal about taking out end of life counseling, and is the first one agreeing that the compensation structure as it was in the House bill rewarded doctors for bringing it up whether their clients were comfortable discussing it or not going into a risky procedure, and compensating them more for certain outcomes, like having a patient agree to sign personal directives. However, taking that provision out (rather than just making it optional, since it is a helpful service if the senior wants it) is purely cosmetic and pandariing. He is trying to position himself as the ‘conservative saviour’ (instead of the insurance companies’ saviour). The entire structure and financial drivers push rationing according to ’suggested standards’ by a government ‘cost effective/best practices’ committee which standards would be enforced through compensation to health care providers who ‘generally follow’ the standards, regardless of whether they were in public or private plans.
The problem is the govt designs and mandates administration of the policies whomever actually ministers them. There is very little room for meaningful variation in policies once the ‘requirements’ of a ‘qualified plan’ are implemented.
Here’s one of many stories on the Obama drug co deal: http://www.sltrib.com/ci_13046477
And some of the financial drivers are that Medicare fund (an insurance baby boomers paid into all their lives from employment tax) would be cut 500 billion to fund this, and while Obama sd that would be made up from ‘efficiencies’ the CBO says efficiencies in the bill will only save $1 billion, and says under Obamacare prices (and therefor premiums, of course) will go up.
We are being herded to frame our disapproval against ‘the public option’ but is that the only thing those against Obamacare are really upset with? Because, if not, you might want to make sure to tell your reps, so you aren’t sold out.
M.O. you don’t read much, do you?
robot, clearly you have no idea what legitimate sources exist. It just reports data from donation databases.
firewoman, if optional you don’t have to convince me, we had a heck of a time convincing the last care home to let us get my Grandmother home when that was all she wanted in the world. It was the compensation drivers to pay doctors more if they got elderly to sign final directives that was the issue.