On Tuesday night, PBS’ Frontline focuses on what really happened to get health reform passed. Here’s a blurb from the press trailer:
“The administration’s hopes for reform rested with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the powerful head of the Senate Finance Committee, who also happened to be one of the Senate’s top recipients of special interest money from the health care industry.
The White House encouraged Baucus to quietly negotiate deals with the insurance lobby, drug companies and other special interest groups, despite promises to run a different kind of White House. “The president said that having people at the table is better than having them throw stuff at the table,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells FRONTLINE. ”
While I haven’t seen the actual program, the trailer is pretty tough stuff.
Apr
12
I am shocked, shocked to learn that soul-selling is going on in Washington.
Sigh. Because health care reform would have been so successful if only it had made enemies of every industry lobby. Solve the coverage problem first, with nods toward quality and cost. Then deal with quality, and finally wrestle with cost. That is how it will go down and how it had to go down. Obama did not have the army to fully take on the cost problem now.
I hate to agree with JD (not because of JD personally, mind you), but anyone who thinks that anything can happen in Washington without a degree of “soul-selling” is naive.
If you think the sausage-making is an ugly process now, just wait for the first post-Citizens United election cycle; it’s about to get worse.