In the game
Monday, July 6 2009
From the Washington Post, a story that will surprise exactly nobody who knows anything about Congress:
The nation’s largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.
Despite some of the touchy-feely things the health care industry has said about reform, they are actually in the game. They’re playing to win. And they’re playing against every sick person, every poor person, every unemployed person, every person whose job dropped their insurance, and millions more.
So what? asks Billy Tauzin:
“Is it a distortion of baseball to hire coaches who have played baseball? Is it a distortion of universities to hire from academia?” Tauzin asked rhetorically. “The bottom line is that people work in the fields in which they have experience. Somehow there are people who think that’s unusual for politics, but I think it’s pretty normal.”
The problem isn’t that they’re hiring former ballplayers to coach. Instead, this is more akin to, say, the New York Yankees hiring former umpires to lobby current umpires to make decisions favorable to that team. You see how this would be a problem for any team the Yankees played against – and that’s why those of us who can’t afford to pay the umpires are so threatened by this phenomenon.
Update: Ezra Klein links to a graphic that illuminates the problem.
