Max Baucus Should Not Be Deciding Health Care for America

The “Senator for K Street” is Putting Campaign Donor Profits Ahead of the Basic Needs of the People
by Kevin Zeese

Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee are too corrupted by corporate health industry profiteers donations to give America the health care policy it needs.

Health care is 15% of the U.S. gross domestic product. U.S. health care expenditures, which have been rising rapidly for several years, surpassed $2.4 trillion in 2007, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990. The cost of health care is projected to reach $4.4 trillion by 2018. There is a lot of room for corporate profiteering in the increasing cost of health care. The millions the health care industry has invested in Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee could therefore turn out to be very profitable.

It is evident that any bill that comes out of the Senate Finance Committee will be a pro-industry bill that will ensure trillions in profits for the health insurance industry, HMOs and the pharmaceutical industry.

Baucus has held two hearings so far and has refused to allow advocates for the most popular reform-a single payer national health policy-to even testify. Single payer "improved Medicare for all" is favored by more than 60% of Americans as well as majorities of doctors, nurses and economists. It is the most cost-effective and efficient way to provide health care to all Americans from cradle to grave.

Why aren't single payer advocates allowed to testify before Baucus' committee? Follow the money. Campaign donations explain why, and demonstrate that the Senate Finance Committee should not be in charge of health care. Senator Reid should remove the health care reform bill from Baucus and start all over before the Health Committee in the Senate.

Here's why Baucus is not doing the people's business:

According to OpenSecrets.org, over his career he has taken donations from:

* The Insurance Industry: $1,170,313
* Health Professionals: $1,016,276
* Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry: $734,605
* Hospitals/Nursing Homes: $541,891
* Health Services/HMOs: $439,700

Baucus has shown his bias and should be removed from leading the health care reform effort by the Democratic Party leadership.

That is a grand total of $3,902,785. Can we trust Baucus to put aside the profits of the industries that have kept him in the Senate? Will he put the people's necessities ahead of the profits of his contributors?

Continued>>>
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/31-4

He wants to use the public plan as a threat to be employed after a number of YEARS if the companies don't come through with better more affordable plans. His is by far the absolutely crappiest suggestion on the table.

But as "health" insurance is basically a form of corporate sponsored legalized gambling; waging on the people's inevitable illness and or injury, I understand his subconscious desire to phrase it in those terms.

why the hell not? They need to know that the public is aware of this shit.

Politicians in the US have to reap huge campaign coffers to run for office. Until this changes to something more democratic, nothing will change.

this jerk Baucus would be forced to step down due to an obvious conflict of interest.

If he had any integrity or ethics, he would not have agreed to chair this committee due to his conflicts.

It's a disgrace. The only entities not being represented by this committee are THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

Medicare for all NOW!

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.