Remember that guy?
Well today, the Wall Street Journal reprints a series of emails showing how his administration colluded with drug-company lobbyists to pass ObamaCare. Never mind the nonsense about Big Pharma making an $80 billion “contribution” to pass the law. An accompanying Wall Street Journal editorial explains that Big Pharma “understood that a new entitlement could be a windfall as taxpayers bought more of their products.”
The money quote from these emails comes from Pfizer lobbyist/Republican/former George W. Bush appointee Anthony Principi. Even though the drug companies were donating to all the right politicians and pledging to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on pro-ObamaCare advertising campaigns and grassroots lobbying, President Obama still accused unnamed “special interests” of trying to stop ObamaCare in order to preserve “a system that worked for the insurance and the drug companies.” Principi was indignant:
We’re trying to kill it? I guess we didn’t give enough in contributions and media ads supporting hcr. Perhaps no amount would suffice.
The nerve. I smell a campaign slogan. “Barack Obama: a Politician Who Cannot Stay Bought.”
The Journal adds:
[Former Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry] Waxman [D‑CA] recently put out a rebuttal memo dismissing these email revelations as routine, “exactly what Presidents have always done to enact major legislation.” Which is precisely the point—the normality is the scandal.
And which critics have argued from the beginning. As I wrote more than two years ago, ObamaCare is corruption:
Each new power ObamaCare creates would be targeted by special interests looking for special favors, and held for ransom by politicians seeking a slice of the pie.
ObamaCare would guarantee that crucial decisions affecting your medical care would be made by the same people, through the same process that created the Cornhusker Kickback, for as far as the eye can see.
When ObamaCare supporters, like Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman, claim that “voters are rejecting the process more than the substance” of the legislation, they’re missing the point.
When government grows, corruption grows. When voters reject these corrupt side deals, they are rejecting the substance of ObamaCare.
Fortunately, voters so detest ObamaCare that there’s a real chance to wipe it from the books. This video explains how state officials can strike a blow against ObamaCare/corruption:
