Jack & Jill Politics

Jane Hamsher of FIREDOGLAKE breaks it down:

The Baucus Caucus: PhRMA, Insurance, Hospitals and Rahm
By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday August 19, 2009 12:01 pm

We started this whip count effort on June 23 because it became clear that in the course of making their deals with stakeholders, the Baucus Caucus (who were negotiating on behalf of the White House, with the participation of the White House) had very likely already dealt the public plan away.

On May 11, “stakeholders” including the AMA, PhRMA, the hospitals and the device manufacturers delivered proposals to the White House promising to “voluntarily” reduce cost increases over the next 10 years. In an effort to keep them “at the table,” Baucus’s Chief of Staff Jon Selib and Finance Committee staffer Russell Sullivan told stakeholders at a May 20 meeting that their participation in the process of crafting a health care bill was contingent on them “holding their fire”:

Sources familiar with the lobbyist meeting described it as collegial, but they said Baucus’ aides made clear that any public opposition to the proposed financing of a reform package would be at their clients’ peril. The staffers’ message to K Street was clear: Tell your clients to let the process work and don’t torpedo it with advertisements, press releases and Web sites.

The goal of keeping stakeholders at the table was threefold:

1. Keep them from advertising against the White House plan
2. Keep them from torpedoing vulnerable Democrats in 2010 so there isn’t a repeat of 1994
3. Keep their money out of GOP coffers

You can see the fingerprints in the deals that they made: the $150 million PhRMA was spending on ads for health care reform, the $2.5 million they spent helping vulnerable freshmen (and Blue Dog Mike Ross, who is anything but vulnerable), and the total fury that Boehner has unleashed on PhRMA and other stakeholders for making deals with the White House.

People make a mistake when they think the battle for health care reform is about ideology, because it’s not. It’s about who controls K Street and the cash that flows from it, which could fund a 2010 GOP resurgenece — or not.

On June 9, a lobbyist who worked for the insurance companies, hospitals, and other stakeholders said that these groups were “considering joining their Republican allies and mounting a public relations offensive to put the brakes on President Barack Obama’s overhaul plans.”
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If you look at the cat-and-mouse game played between the Democrats and the Republicans, support expressed by the President for a “public plan” meant “don’t you dare.” A commitment that the bill will be “bipartisan” (since the GOP would never agree to one) was a signal that there would be no public plan.

The White House never cared about getting Republican votes — it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA. Giving in to “Republican” demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. They didn’t need Republican votes, they never did, and they never truly cared. As long as the money stayed out of their campaign coffers, it was all good.

If a public plan gets into a final health care bill, it’s going to be because of public pressure, because people who put Obama in office demand one. Because in the grand scheme of White House priorities, it was something that could acceptably be dealt away in pursuit of a higher political objective by the guy who was calling the plays: Rahm Emanuel.

Rest of this superb article is at the link above.