Max is in the money, healthcare industry blood money

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This deals with our friend, Max Baucus. Guy did a great job of kicking out supporters of single payer health care from the hearings:


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
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(almost $4 million alone from health care industry)

In 2008 alone:

Insurance: $592,185
Health Professionals: $537,141
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products: $524,813
Health Services/HMOs: $364,500
Hospitals/Nursing Homes: $332,826

--------------couple of other top donors--------------------------
Securities and investment: $831,350
Lobbist: $374,247

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00004643&type=I&mem=
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Now, we all know that folks can take money from total strangers and still be objective. I am certain Max is that. Max should certainly "excuse" himself as chair when they have more hearings on health care.

Yes, it seems America has the best leaders money can buy. By the way Max, you keeping track of the Americans who die each day for lack of healthcare? You keeping track of the Americans killed by the insurance companies for denial of just claims?

India moves to protect stee industry

Folks might find this of interest. What happened to free trade?
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NEW DELHI, May 29 (Reuters) - India will consider slapping an additional import tax on steel to protect domestic industries from cheap imports, the country's new steel minister said on Friday.

"There are demands to take fiscal measures to stop cheap imports. The issue has to be addressed immediately," Virbhadra Singh said after taking office, but gave no details of the quantum of tax.India currently imposes a tax of 5 percent on steel imports, which domestic industry would like to see hiked to upto 20 percent.

Singh also said the government would expand production capacity at state-owned firms Steel Authority of India Ltd and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd.He said the output capacity of SAIL could go up to 26 million tonnes in the next three years from about 15 million now, while RINL capacity could reach 6 million tonnes in the next two years from 3 million now.

Singh added both companies would invest 700 billion rupees for the capacity expansion programmes."One of my key priorities would be to ensure that these projects are completed on time in a cost effective fashion," he said.India's steel consumption is only 46 kg per head against the global consumption figure of 150 kg, Singh added."It would thus be a key national priority to ensure greater consumption of steel as well as augmentation of production facilities to meet the country's growing steel demand," he said.He added that global steel output had declined by 23 percent in the first quarter of 2009, while domestic output grew at 1.01 percent in the same quarter from a year earlier

.SAIL shares were up 6.2 per cent at 174.50 rupees by 0714 GMT, outperforming a rise of 2.4 percent in the benchmark index .

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GM bondholders, made in China and more

GM is having woes. Another woe, made in China autos. Really believe management will keep its word? This is from today's Ed Show and does mention the Bus tour.

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American taxpayer's money to save auto industry that will export jobs (perhaps) after American workers give up many a benefit. See anything wrong with that picture?

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bus tour additional vid

This is a good vid on bus tour of Steelworkers and UAW. Highlights

Obama backs Bush era free trade deals

The following article is of interest to those wishing to keep track of "fair trade" vs "free trade". Obama is backing Bush projects:

Note: this is copyrighted article and I shall withdraw if objections made

Obama Likely to Push for Approval of Pending Bush Trade PactsThe new president is making the same case that Bush made, but this time Congress will listen.By Andrew C. Schneider May 26, 2009

Odds are improving that Congress will ratify three free trade agreements (FTAs) negotiated by the Bush administration. The White House is making an aggressive push to get the deals approved, partly to boost exports and create jobs, but more importantly for diplomatic reasons.
Leaving the trade pact with South Korea unratified risks damaging a key alliance, at a time when Seoul's help is essential in efforts to contain a nuclear-armed North Korea. Likewise, President Obama is determined to improve U.S. relations with Latin America. Colombia and Panama are two of the most reliable U.S. allies in the region, and their cooperation is critical to U.S. efforts to combat cocaine trafficking. Letting deals with them falter risks alienating both and would strengthen Venezuela, which would attempt to sell itself as a more trustworthy partner to its neighbors.

President Bush made the same points in defense of all three trade agreements. But while Democrats balked at handing Bush any diplomatic victories in the run-up to the 2008 election, they are more likely to accept same reasoning from Obama. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make the national security argument as well, nailing down additional votes.

John Gilliland, a former Democratic trade counsel for the Senate Finance Committee now with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, notes a definite change of mood on Capitol Hill. "There's clearly a sense that [Mont. Sen. Max] Baucus and [NY Rep. Charles] Rangel want to move this forward," says Gilliland, referring respectively to the chairmen of the Senate Finance and House Ways & Means Committees.

The Panama deal, the smallest and least controversial treaty, will pass by July. Congress still wants some answers about Panama's tax and bank secrecy laws. But in the end, it'll approve the pact, opening up trade and investment opportunities tied to the expansion of the Panama Canal.
The Colombia pact, which faces stiffer opposition, won't come up till late in the year. Unions are leaning hard on Democrats to block ratification of the agreement, alleging Colombia still isn't doing enough to rein in violence against organized labor. Obama will work with President Alvaro Uribe and congressional Democrats to develop benchmarks for progress in order to secure enough votes for passage.

The benefits of both of these pacts largely accrue to the U.S. Most goods from Colombia and Panama already enter the U.S. duty free under existing trade preferences. By contrast, both Panama and Colombia currently apply tariffs ranging from 8% to 15% to a wide variety of manufactured goods, with rates in the high-double and even triple digits for agricultural products. Further, both countries currently ban the import of remanufactured goods. That’s a potentially lucrative market for U.S. industrial and consumer exports, including cell phones, computers and earthmoving equipment.

U.S. sectors that stand to gain the most from eliminating such tariffs include construction services and equipment, infrastructure and machinery, power generation and transmission, transportation, information technology, chemicals, building materials, medical equipment, financial services, cotton, beef, poultry, wheat, soybeans, fruits, vegetables and processed foods. The pacts would also provide additional security for U.S. direct investment and intellectual property rights.

Korea, the biggest prize, will probably remain out of reach till 2010. Rust Belt members, notably House Trade Subcommittee Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI), still worry the pact gives too much of a competitive advantage to Korean carmakers at the expense of the besieged Detroit Three.
Working out a compromise will be tough. Korean legislators are just as sensitive on the issue as their U.S. counterparts, and with good reason. Last year, President Lee Myung-bak relaxed an import ban on American beef, in place since the 2003 discovery of a case of mad cow disease in Washington state. Farm state legislators in the U.S. -- including Baucus and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican -- refused to support the Korea agreement as long as the beef ban was in place. While Lee's action won additional support for the pact in Congress, it also triggered riots in Seoul.

Obama will use Lee's U.S. visit in June to start negotiations about how to resolve the auto impasse. He'll aim to wrap up talks and send the Korea-U.S. FTA to Congress for ratification by early next year. Waiting any longer would risk letting the deal become entangled in election year politics.

The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates that eliminating tariffs and tariff-rate quotas on U.S. goods shipments to South Korea would boost U.S. exports by $10 billion a year. As a point of comparison, exports of U.S. goods and services to Korea for the whole of 2008 totaled just under $35 billion.

http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/Approval_of_Pending_Trade_Pacts_090526.html
All contents © 2009 The Kiplinger Washington Editors

Excellent Krugman comment on healthcare mess

Krugman is an excellent writer and brilliant thinker. These comments should be the talk of the town, but alas they are not.

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May 11, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

Harry, Louise and Barack
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Is this the end for Harry and Louise?
Harry and Louise were the fictional couple who appeared in advertisements run by the insurance industry in 1993, fretting about what would happen if “government bureaucrats” started making health care decisions. The ads helped kill the Clinton health care plan, and have stood, ever since, as a symbol of the ability of powerful special interests to block health care reform.

But on Saturday, excited administration officials called me to say that this time the medical-industrial complex (their term, not mine) is offering to be helpful.

Six major industry players — including America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a descendant of the lobbying group that spawned Harry and Louise — have sent a letter to President Obama sketching out a plan to control health care costs. What’s more, the letter implicitly endorses much of what administration officials have been saying about health economics.

Are there reasons to be suspicious about this gift? You bet — and I’ll get to that in a bit. But first things first: on the face of it, this is tremendously good news.

The signatories of the letter say that they’re developing proposals to help the administration achieve its goal of shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.

How are costs to be contained? There are few details, but the industry has clearly been reading Peter Orszag, the budget director.

In his previous job, as the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Orszag argued that America spends far too much on some types of health care with little or no medical benefit, even as it spends too little on other types of care, like prevention and treatment of chronic conditions. Putting these together, he concluded that “substantial opportunities exist to reduce costs without harming health over all.”

Sure enough, the health industry letter talks of “reducing over-use and under-use of health care by aligning quality and efficiency incentives.” It also picks up a related favorite Orszag theme, calling for “adherence to evidence-based best practices and therapies.” All in all, it’s just what the doctor, er, budget director ordered.

Before we start celebrating, however, we have to ask the obvious question. Is this gift a Trojan horse? After all, several of the organizations that sent that letter have in the past been major villains when it comes to health care policy.

I’ve already mentioned AHIP. There’s also the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the lobbying group that helped push through the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 — a bill that both prevented Medicare from bargaining over drug prices and locked in huge overpayments to private insurers. Indeed, one of the new letter’s signatories is former Representative Billy Tauzin, who shepherded that bill through Congress then immediately left public office to become PhRMA’s lavishly paid president.

The point is that there’s every reason to be cynical about these players’ motives. Remember that what the rest of us call health care costs, they call income.

What’s presumably going on here is that key interest groups have realized that health care reform is going to happen no matter what they do, and that aligning themselves with the Party of No will just deny them a seat at the table. (Republicans, after all, still denounce research into which medical procedures are effective and which are not as a dastardly plot to deprive Americans of their freedom to choose.)

I would strongly urge the Obama administration to hang tough in the bargaining ahead. In particular, AHIP will surely try to use the good will created by its stance on cost control to kill an important part of health reform: giving Americans the choice of buying into a public insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers. The administration should not give in on this point.
But let me not be too negative. The fact that the medical-industrial complex is trying to shape health care reform rather than block it is a tremendously good omen. It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens.

And serious cost control would change everything, not just for health care, but for America’s fiscal future. As Mr. Orszag has emphasized, rising health care costs are the main reason long-run budget projections look so grim. Slow the rate at which those costs rise, and the future will look far brighter.

I still won’t count my health care chickens until they’re hatched. But this is some of the best policy news I’ve heard in a long time.

The Influence Game healthcare

This is from Boston Globe and simular article in the Post Dispatch:



THE INFLUENCE GAME: Health lobbyist has great sway
Associated Press

If anyone could make or break President Barack Obama's health care agenda, it might be Karen Ignagni.

Erica Werner
May 24, 2009
THE INFLUENCE GAME: Health lobbyist has great sway
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer May 24, 2009

WASHINGTON --If anyone could make or break President Barack Obama's health care agenda, it might be Karen Ignagni.

The Democratic former union official and firefighter's daughter is also the unlikely face of the powerful health insurance industry as its top Washington lobbyist.

Ignagni is such a formidable advocate that when she went head to head with industry-bashing filmmaker Michael Moore on the Oprah Winfrey show, she emerged not only unscathed, but with Moore seconding some of her points.

Now, with the prospect of a congressional health care overhaul looming, Ignagni's role is more important than ever. It's a moment she's long prepared for.

Ignagni and her board at America's Health Insurance Plans foresaw three years ago that 2009 could be a year that health care would top the agenda, and they decided to craft a plan.
For months, Ignagni has been fleshing out their proposal bit by bit at congressional hearings, ensuring maximum attention.

The plan would achieve Obama's goal of universal health coverage through a regulated insurance market. Insurers would agree to significant concessions such as not charging more to people with pre-existing conditions. In return, they want to quash a government-run insurance plan that Obama supports, but that Ignagni fears would put private insurers out of business.

Although Congress may not embrace all her proposals, Ignagni can claim notable success in positioning her industry as an ally of health care change, not its enemy. That's a 180-degree turnaround from where the industry was during the health care wars of the Clinton years.
Not only are health insurers at the table, they're sometimes driving the debate, as with the White House announcement this month that the health industry would cut its own costs by $2 trillion to further Obama's cause. Ignagni was a key architect.

"She's gifted at anticipating what issues are likely to be," said George Halvorson, chairman of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and AHIP's immediate past board chairman. He credited Ignagni with orchestrating the board's preparation for the health care debate.

"The fact that we sat down and wrestled with all of the issues on underwriting and so forth was genius on her part," Halvorson said.

But as publicly constructive as the insurance industry's role has been so far, a giant question mark remains: What will Ignagni do if Congress does produce a bill she doesn't like? Will her group try to kill it, resurrecting "Harry and Louise"-style attack ads that proved so devastating during the Clinton years? That could doom Obama's health care goals.

Liberals fear AHIP is already preparing the wrecking ball. Ignagni refuses to say how they'll respond to an unfavorable bill.

"We're how many weeks away from seeing whatever is proposed? So no responsible person could answer a question like that," Ignagni, 55, said in an interview.

"The people who are working on this issue, even in areas where we have differences, are very thoughtful, have the right objectives, and we have a long history of working with them," she added. "So we're going to give them the courtesy of thoughtfully responding to what they propose."

Ignagni didn't work for the insurance group that produced the "Harry and Louise" commercials. Indeed the man most responsible for them, Chip Kahn, who's now at the Federation of American Hospitals, went up against Ignagni when their two insurance lobbies merged in 2003, and she beat him out for her current job. Kahn declined to comment for this story.

"Whatever AHIP pays her, it's not enough. She's unbelievably effective," said Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt. "It's just amazing what she's achieved for them against all odds."
Ignagni's total compensation, according to AHIP's most recent filing from 2007, was $1.58 million, which includes $700,000 in base salary, $370,000 in deferred compensation and a bonus. Ignagni won't say how many hours a week she works. The number's so high it's embarrassing, she said.

Among successes cited by Reinhardt and others is helping persuade the Bush administration to develop private insurance plans within Medicare that are producing unexpectedly high payments for private insurers.

When Congress was considering expanding a children's health insurance program in 2007 by taking money from the private Medicare Advantage plans, Ignagni worked successfully to stop it.

Those private plans are being targeted again by Obama, who wants to squeeze them to pay for his health care agenda. Ignagni's industry group is organizing older people to defend the plans.
A front group called the Coalition for Medicare Choices has a Web site inviting older people to share their stories about Medicare Advantage. The fine print gives AHIP the right to use that information however it wants.

Ignagni's job isn't easy. AHIP's board consists of chief executives of top insurers and Ignagni has to bring them to consensus in order to make her moves. People who work with her say she does it by listening hard and being well-informed, respectful and prepared.

"She's always on her game and knows her substance," said Tom Scully, a former Medicare administrator. "Health insurance CEOs come and go, but Karen has been a constant."
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On the Net:
America's Health Insurance Plans: http://www.ahip.org/
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