Money Sure Talks And When It Does We Lose

We all knew that the insurance companies and medical establishment were spending big money lobbying Congress over the Health Care Reform bill but now Roll Call has crunched the numbers and come up with the absolutely unbelievable figure of $876 million spent by medical interests lobbying Congress during the health care fight:

Medical interests alone shelled out more than $876 million in lobbying expenses during the 15 months beginning in January 2009 and ending in March, when Congress passed the sweeping overhaul.
Those stakeholders, including the drug industry, doctors, hospitals and manufacturers of medical products, were responsible for one out of every five dollars doled out on lobbying during that period, according to a CQ MoneyLine analysis of lobbying disclosure reports filed with Congress.

While we unwashed and smelly hippies were foolish enough to believe that there was some small chance that American health care costs would be brought into line with the costs of other industrialized countries it is clear now that we were out gunned/spent all the way round.

A good example of how we lost the progressive battle is evident in just the spending of the drug companies through their lobbying arm PhRMA who spent a whopping 253 million dollars. For their big investment they managed to keep out drug re-importation and direct Medicare drug price negotiation, and were able to add very long exclusivity periods for biologics to boot. Those three items alone would have saved American consumers 100 billion dollars over the next 10 years. Of course, American consumers saving means drug companies missing 100 billion in profits. Can't have that, so their 253 million netted them at least 100 billion. That's a mighty fine return on investment if you ask me.

I just can't help wondering what kind of health care system we could have in this country if there were some limits on how many Congress critters you can buy a year?

h/t Jon Walker at Firedoglake