Lobbyists For and Against Health Care Reform


1. Argument to discredit newly formed groups as unworthy of speech, suggesting that the AMA, Big Pharma and related entrenched lobbyists should be heard but not new ones?


Who Is Bankrolling the League of American Voters?
Source: Huffington Post, September 24, 2009.

"Standing in a medical exam room, a neurosurgeon in a white lab coat stares solemnly into the camera and warns that President Obama's health care plan 'will hurt our seniors' and 'end Medicare as we know it.' ... How this ad came to be produced and distributed provides a case study in modern American political advocacy. It shows how a quickly assembled group with uncertain origins and funding can make a mark on one of the most contentious public policy debates in memory. The group that says it paid for the campaign -- the League of American Voters -- incorporated less than two weeks before the ad was released online. The League's executive director, its only employee, declined to identify its founders or donors but claims that in less than two months of existence it has built a membership of 16,000 and raised about $1.7 million in donations. ... Interviews and a review of public records show that a wide-ranging group of people coalesced to launch the League or its ad campaign: Dick Morris, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and one of the nation's more flamboyant political operatives; a one-time West Virginia political candidate ([Bob Adams); a New York City public relations executive with ties to health care groups (Alexandra Preate]; a New York rabbi; a filmmaker best known for an ad questioning the patriotism of Vietnam War veteran and then-Georgia senator Max Cleland (Rick Wilson); and a Florida doctor who once settled a state medical board allegation that he had operated on the wrong site during a spinal procedure."

* * *

2. This too suggests that only some lobbyists should be heard. ACORN organizers and their supporters are acceptable but not others who organized?

The Lie Machine Killing Health Care Reform
Source: Rolling Stone, September 23, 2009

"According to internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone, Conservatives for Patients' Rights had been working closely for weeks as a 'coalition partner' with three other right-wing groups in a plot to unleash irate mobs at town-hall meetings ... . 'The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform,' says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. ... The campaign to mobilize the town-hall mobs began with a script written by the right's foremost fearmonger, Frank Luntz" who "outlined a battle plan for conservatives to block what he branded the 'Washington takeover' of health care. ... Distributed widely to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the memo framed the right-wing attack on health care reform. ... Armed with the script ... a tight coalition of deep-pocketed groups took the lead in mobilizing the town-hall protests. The two primary groups -- Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks -- actually grew out of the 2003 breakup of an outfit called Citizens for a Sound Economy that had been integral in the fight against Hillarycare."