"We are taking on the
big-money interests who have an army of lobbyists trying to defeat Medicare for
All."
Monday, December 02, 2019
Documents obtained by
the Washington Post Monday showed that lobbyists helped three state
lawmakers draft op-eds this year attacking Medicare for All, a revelation Sen.
Bernie Sanders highlighted as further evidence that the healthcare industry is
"terrified" of the push for single-payer.
"We are taking on the
big-money interests who have an army of lobbyists trying to defeat Medicare for
All," tweeted Sanders,
a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. "They are terrified that the
American people recognize that healthcare is a human right. They're right to be
terrified."
The Post's Jeff Stein
reported Monday that Montana state Rep. Kathy Kelker (D), Montana state Sen.
Jen Gross (D), and an aide to Ohio state Sen. Steve Huffman (R) admitted in
interviews that lobbyists helped craft their recent op-eds criticizing Medicare
for All. The three columns appeared in local newspapers; none of them disclosed
that they were written with the assistance of lobbyists.
Kelker and Gross
"acknowledged in interviews that editorials they published separately about the single-payer health
proposal included language provided by John MacDonald, a lobbyist and
consultant in [Montana] who disclosed in private emails that he worked for an
unnamed client," Stein reported.
Kathleen DeLand, an Ohio-based
lobbyist, assisted Huffman with his September 30 Sidney Daily News op-ed,
which criticized Medicare for All as a "one-size-fits-all approach"
that "does not work for healthcare."
Huffman's aide told the Post that
he believes DeLand was working for the Partnership for America's Health Care
Future (PAHCF), an industry front group formed
last year to fight Medicare for All.
"DeLand's emails to the
Ohio lawmaker's staff include the acronym for the group in the subject line:
'PAHCF op-ed - OH - Huffman[3]. docx,'" Stein reported, citing documents
provided to the Post by non-profit advocacy group Medicare for All
Now.
MacDonald, who edited the
Montana lawmakers' columns, would not confirm to the Post whether he
was working for PAHCF.
"The emails appear to
show extensive outside involvement in the Montana lawmakers' op-eds,"
Stein reported. "In a Microsoft Word document, MacDonald removed three
paragraphs from a draft of Kelker's op-ed that pointed out that the United
States 'clearly spends significantly more on healthcare per capita than other
developed nations.' He also deleted a table from the lawmaker's original draft
showing that the United States has higher healthcare spending per capita than
France, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland."
Wendell Potter, president of
advocacy group Business for Medicare for All, said the emails "blow open
what I saw firsthand and revealed as a health insurance whistleblower."
"These companies and
their lobbyists will stoop to whatever it takes, no matter how grotesque, to
deny people the lifesaving coverage they need," Potter, a former health
insurance executive, told the Post. "This is just the latest reason
we need to reform this broken system where greedy corporations determine who
can get medical treatment in America."
In a series of
tweets Monday, Potter called on PAHCF to "come clean about any
other op-eds secretly authored by the health insurance industry to discredit
Medicare for All."
"This move by the
industry is built on a decades old corporate playbook used previously by Big
Tobacco and the NRA," said Potter. "Placing industry-crafted talking
points under the byline of trusted local leaders is a tried and true way to
manipulate the public."
Larry Noble, who served as
general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center and the Federal Election
Commission, echoed Potter's ethical concerns.
"It's disturbing,"
Noble said of the emails in an interview with the Post. "I think
there's a certain ethical obligation to be upfront about who wrote the
editorial."
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