2centsworth.info

The stars do seem aligned for much needed change in the US healthcare system. But the organizations with a vested interest in the status quo, their lavishly funded lobbyists, and their tame Congressmen are going to do their damndest to make sure it does not happen.

The Boston Globe has an interesting article today: Held hostage by the health system. The article starts out by mentioning that the Senate Finance Committee (chaired by Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley) held a hearing earlier this month on healthcare reform and did not allow any advocates of a single-payer healthcare system to testify. And it is not as if there weren’t single-payer advocates ready and willing to speak. The Physicians for a National Health Program (which represents 16,000 doctors) asked the Committee to invite Dr. Marcia Angell (a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and a former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine) to speak but the Committee decided to invite industry lobbyists instead.

As Dr. Angel points out, nearly every other developed country (e.g. Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, etc.) has some form of single-payer system. All pay less per capita than the US and all have better health statistics than the US. Surely, any debate on meaningful change in our healthcare system should include debate and discussion on single-payer systems. And equally surely, the only reason it isn’t being included is that it represents a financial threat to for-profit insurers, the pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit hospitals and they and their lobbyists will do whatever they can to steer debate and discussion away from single-payer options.

In addition to Dr. Angell’s Globe article (see link above), I would recommend checking out the PBS FrontLine program Sick Around the World which examines the single-payer health plans in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Japan.

I run a small business and I currently get my healthcare through the local Chamber of Commerce. Inflation in the US has been running in the single digits for the last few years but each year the health insurance premiums go up by anything from 15% to 25%. There seems to be no real competition between the insurance companies on cost or benefits, no transparency (there are pages of fine print… “Oh, you thought you were covered”), and no real incentive on the part of the insurance companies to control cost.

The irony is that our current “free market”  healthcare system is hurting the ability of US companies to compete globally. Healthcare costs are the fastest growing costs for US firms and are growing much faster than the comparable healthcare costs for their European and Asian competitors.

Another fascinating article on the front page of today’s New York Times (24 March 2007): Fraud Inquiry Looks at Lawyers in Diet-Drug Case. In what experts are describing as one of the biggest and most brazen frauds in legal history, the lawyers who settled the fenphen diet-drug lawsuit on behalf of 440 clients for $200 millions kept most of the money for themselves. The three lawyers involved are William J. Gallion, Shirley A. Cunningham, and Melbourne Mills, Jr. Mr. Mills lawyer said that he denies any criminal wrong-doing… “He may be liable for a little money if he was overpaid.”

Given the original agreement between the three lawyers and their clients, the clients should have received $135 million dollars from the settlement. Instead they only received $74 million. $106 million went to the lawyers and $20 million went to a “charitable fund.”

But wait, you say… Settlements have to be approved by the judge. Why did he approve this bogus settlement? Well that’s where the “charitable fund” came in…. It turns out that the judge, the “honorable” Joseph F. Bamberger ended up as a director of the “charitable fund” and was paid $5,000 a month for all his hard work on its behalf.

I suppose we have all become rather numb to rampant greed but I’d like to point out that these lawyers could have perfectly legally divided $65 million between themselves… Unless my calculator’s broken that’s nearly $22 million each.

It’s hard to decide which Federal agency is the most corrupt these days but Interior is certainly in the running for that prize.

Today’s New York Times (24 March 2007) has a front page article Ex-Interior Aide is Guilty of Lying in Lobbying Case. The second highest official in the Dept. of Interior, J. Steven Griles, pleaded guilty to lying before a Senate committee about his ties to Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who is now in prison.

According to the article, Mr. Griles told the Senate committee he had “no special relationship” with Jack Abramoff even though Abramoff routinely sought and received advice from Mr. Griles. He also failed to mention that he had a sexual relationship with one Italia Federici. Ms. Federici is the president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy which received $500,000 from Mr. Abramoff. As Mr. Giles may have said, “Advocate this, honey!”…

The article also mentions that Mr. Griles had teamed up with a top ConocoPhillips lobbyist to buy a $980,000 vacation home. This purchase was approved by Sue Ellen Wooldridge, a top official in the Dept. of the Interior at the time. She also ended up as a co-owner of the vacation home. Conflict of Interest? What conflict of interest? Ms. Wooldridge is now, erh, “living in sin” with Mr. Griles in Falls Church, VA. (I know, I know… nobody gets married these days but heck, these are Republicans! Where’s their family values!?)

Ms. Wooldridge a former solicitor (No, not that kind!… a lawyer!) and senior aide to Secretary of the Interior, Gail Norton, ended up as a lawyer at the Justice Dept. prosecuting environmental cases… Including one against Conoco Phillips which she, erh, dropped.

Just how does the Food and Drug Administration decide what drugs or devices to approve for use by the public?

These decisions are made by FDA Advisory Committees made up of experts in the field.

Today’s New York Times (22 March, 2007) has an article F.D.A. Rule Limits Role of Advisors Tied to Industry which says that advisory committee members will (for the first time) be barred from voting on approval for a company’s product if they have received money from that company or a competitor. And if they have received more than $50,000 from that company or a competitor within the last 12 months then they cannot serve on a committee judging that company’s products (less than $50k is just hunky dory ).

FDA Acting Deputy Commissioner Randall W. Lutter stated that a “signficant number” of the agency’s current advisers would be affected by this policy.

What that means, of course, is that up until now, many of the people responsible for approving drugs and medical devices have been routinely accepting tens of thousands of dollars a year from the company’s whose products they were approving. Smells a just a bit, don’t you think?

The article describes a situation in 2005 where 10 of the advisers who voted for Bextra to remain on the market and Vioxx to return to the market had accepted tens of thousands of dollars from the manufacturers. If the tainted advisors had not been allowed to vote, the products would not have been allowed back on the market since the majority of advisers who had not accepted money had voted against approval.

Other little tidbits from the article; under FDA rules an adviser cannot vote if they hold more than $100,000 in stock in the manufacturer (but holding $99,000 or less is hunky dory ).

One needs to remember that the previous FDA Commissioner, Lester Crawford, recently pleaded guilty to charges of filing false financial disclosure forms and conflicts of interest. The government had charged that Crawford and his wife owned stock in several companies that fell under FDA regulation, and failed to fully disclose that information as required by federal law. The court papers also charge that Crawford assured federal ethics officers that he and his wife had sold stock in those companies, when they had not.

Crawford’s attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, said that under a plea agreement, her client would not dispute the government’s charges, and would likely face fines and a possible prison term of up to two years.

Click here to read the Department of Justice news release on the case’s outcome.

So much for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 100 hour blitzkrieg to return Capitol Hill to a higher ethical standard. Not only is she weakening her message by demanding that the Pentagon fly her around in a personal 757… But it is already evident that her new rules designed to curb the influence of lobbyists is an abject failure.

According to today’s New York Times article (Congress Finds Ways of Avoiding Lobbyist Limits by David Kirkpatrick, Sunday February 11, 2007), it has taken congressmen on both sides of the aisle only a few weeks to figure out how to get around the new ethics rules. (Actually, I am sure they knew how to get around them in advance… After all it was the lawmakers who wrote the rules and they were written to have loopholes a mile wide.)

Pelosi’s new rules prohibit lobbyists from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box seats, or discounted use of private jets. However, according to the article, within the last two months, lawmakers have invited lobbyists to help pay for lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker’s honor ($1,000 per lobbyist), margaritas and martinis at Washington area restaurants ($1,000), a California wine-tasting tour, hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up)… The list goes on and on…

The trick is that the lobbyists don’t pay the lawmaker directly. Instead the lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee…which then pays for the lawmaker’s party, trip, etc. Apparently nothing in Nancy Pelosi’s new rules prohibits this… Is she a naive fool or “one of them”?

The New York Times article has the following table:

Join Your Favorite Lawmaker For… (for a “small” contribution)
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee	Weekend at the Harbor House resort on Nantucket	$25,000
Senator Max Baucus (Dem. Montana)	Skiing or snowmobiling in February or golfing or fly-fishing in the summer	$5,000
Senator Tom Carper (Dem. Delaware)	Skiing weekend at the Ritz-Carleton Bachelor Gulch in Colorado	$5,000
Senator Bill Nelson (Dem. Florida)	Super Bowl Party in Miami	$5,000
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (Dem. Ohio)	“Manicures and Muffins” at Capitol Nails in Washington	$2,500
Senator Mel Martinez (Rep. Florida)	Presidents’ Day Weekend at Disneyland	$5,000
Rep. Eric Cantor (Rep. Virginia)	Coffee at Starbucks (four mornings this Spring)	$2,500
Rep. Ron Manzullo (Rep. Illinois)	Valentine’s Day Reception at Landini Brothers in Alexandria, VA	$1,500
Rep. Mary Bono (Rep. California)	Concert by The Who	$2,500 for two
Rep. Vito Fossella (Rep. New York)	Performance of “Mary Poppins” on Broadway	$2,500 for two
Rep. Kay Granger (Rep. Texas)	“Grangertinis” birthday party at a Washington Steakhouse	$1,000

I really like the sound of the “Manicures and Muffins”, myself. For $2,500, I am sure those are really good muffins.