What the opponents and special interests are up to

While things may have seemed quiet in the lull between House passage of health reform legislation and Senate debate, the special interests and opponents of reform have been busy. Here's some of what they've been up to:

• More than 40 House members - almost evenly split between Republicans and Democrats - inserted speeches in the Congressional Record during the health reform debate that included talking points written by lobbyists for Genentech, a biotech pharmaceutical company, according to the New York Times. About a dozen offered the same statement, nearly word for word. The statements had to do with provisions in the legislation that had to do with developing generic versions of biotech drugs. It's not one of the key issues in the debate, and the statements don't change the bill, but it does show the power of well-connected lobbyists.
• The New York Times also reported that drug companies have been rushing to raise prices aggressively before Congress can pass legislation that might curb drug prices. "Even as drug makers promise to support Washington's health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation's drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years," the Times found.
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is raising money from business executives to hire a "respected economist" who will conduct a study and circulate a letter "saying that the bill will kill jobs and hurt the economy," according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. If we had any doubts, this is clear demonstration that many of those "scientific" studies that have come from the insurance industry and the Chamber of Commerce may have started with their conclusion before the research was done - even before the researcher was picked.

We need to be as busy as the Chamber of Commerce and the drug and insurance Companies. As the Senate takes up health reform, beginning this week, we need to contact our Senators to make sure the Senate passes a bill which will fix the system and won't tax our benefits.