Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Loobyists and Others at a Health Care Hearsin(photo: Robb Hill/NPR)
To understand the real Washington, DC, is to witness what goes on beyond the public hearings or prefabricated press conferences, write Bill Moyers and Michael Winship. Case in point: the debacle of Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth’s attempt to host private dinner parties at which lobbyists and CEOs of the health care industry were expected to pay either $25,000 or even $250,000 to attend/sponsor and schmooze with the newspaper’s reporters and editors, as well as lawmakers and administration officials. The Post pitched the get-togethers as being “a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard.”
The proposed private affairs demonstrated how disconnected the nation’s capital truly is from the real “stakeholders” of health care reform—average Americans who “need quality health care but can’t afford it,” Moyers and Winship argue. “If any of them showed up at the kitchen door on the night of this little soiree, the bouncer would drop kick them beyond the Beltway.”
While one public opinion survey after another shows a majority of Americans want a public option in health care, President Barack Obama—the champion of such a bold plan—may be starting to waver in his conviction to provide this popular reform to the people because of the all-powerful pull of corporate influences in another, financially-driven direction.
The Washington Post party invitations enthused that those who paid would get to participate in the health-care debate with “the select few who will get it done.” “That’s how it works,” say Moyers and Winship. “The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change—nothing—until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATMs are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they’ve placed on government—the one that reads, ‘For Sale.’”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Some Choice Words for "The Select Few" (by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Truthout)
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