Pretty soon we’ll be talking about big money:
Health insurers last year gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health-care overhaul law, according to tax records and people familiar with the donation.
The insurance lobby, whose members include Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Philadelphia-based Cigna Corp., gave the money to the Chamber in 2009 as Democrats were increasing their criticism of the industry, according to one person who requested anonymity because laws don’t require identifying funding sources. The Chamber of Commerce received the money from the Washington-based America’s Health Insurance Plans when the industry was urging Congress to drop a plan to create a competing public insurance option.
The spending exceeded the insurer group’s entire budget from a year earlier and accounted for 40 percent of the Chamber’s $214.6 million in 2009 spending. The expenditures reflect the insurers’ attempts to influence the bill after Democrats in Congress and the White House put more focus on regulation of the insurance industry.
$86 million buys a lot of “Keep Government out of My Medicare” signs.
WereBear
It would also keep a lot of people healthy.
Linda Featheringill
Insurance companies. Bah!
A whole industry devoted to exploiting people in a weak and vulnerable position.
If there were any justice in this world . . . . .
mikefromArlington
They could have insured another 30 thousand people for that kind of money.
Maude
How much of the insurance company’s lobbying budget came from premium payments?
grandpajohn
It also could have provided for a lot of health care for people whose claims were denied or it could have provided a lot of premium r
reduction for certain classes of insured
Hawes
The delicious irony here is that they gave all this money to the Chamber to elect people who are now talking about removing the mandate from the bill.
I think the mandate is necessary at this point as we move towards universality, but it’s essential to the insurance companies.
Idiots.
tfitzaz
Here in Phoenix, there have been numerous ‘feel good’ TV ads for United Health. Considering they are one of the worst health care insurance providers, only the idiots will be fooled by the implication that they put the customer, oops, I mean patient ahead of their own bottom line.
Mnemosyne
@tfitzaz:
Blue Cross is doing the same thing here in California. Meanwhile, they’ve had to pay millions in fines to our insurance commissioner for dropping people’s insurance against the rules.
Punchy
That 86.2 mill will have to recouped, of course, by….wait for it…..significantly higher premiums, natch.
Mnemosyne
@Punchy:
Yep. And it will all be because of “Obamacare.” The HHS has already caught them doing it.
Platonicspoof
At $15.48 each and free shipping from Amazon, 86 million could put a copy of Wendell Potter’s new book “Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans” in every other U.S. household (a bit over 100 million).
The book just came out, so I haven’t read it yet, just a number of his interviews. He also has a blog at prwatch.org.
Ruckus
@Maude:
All of it?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Praise Jesus that President Obama stood strong against these fat cats so that they were unable to influence his historic legislation!
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englishmajor
“laws don’t require identifying funding sources” You can’t even FOIA this stuff, can you? All the names/numbers I’ve heard about funding “on the down-low” have been slipped to some investigative reporter in a dark parking garage. Unless an insider blabs, there’s no way to find out anything. Scary times ahead.