In the defeat of the public-option solution for health care reform, contributions from industry sources seemed to trump polling data. A New York Times/CBS News poll published on September 25 showed 65% of Americans favored a government administered health insurance plan, similar to Medicare, to compete with private health insurance plans. When the responses were broken down by political party affiliation, 81% of Democrats supported the public option. And yet five Democrats sitting on the Senate Finance Committee voted to kill the idea.

All five have received millions of dollars from insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, nursing homes and doctors over the past two decades:

Max Baucus of Montana: $7,734,102
Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas: $4,190,592
Kent Conrad of North Dakota: $3,287,891
Bill Nelson of Florida: $2,414,895
Tom Carper of Delaware: $1,592,380
                                                                                                                                                       -Noel Brinkerhoff

Bought by the Insurance Lobby (Intershame.com)