What's Wrong With This Picture?

Tom Daschle with the president-elect in Chicago in December.

From the New York Times:

Six months have passed since the morning when Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader, under fire for not paying certain taxes, called President Obama in his study off the Oval Office to withdraw his nomination as health secretary and reform czar.

But these days it often seems as if Mr. Daschle never left the picture. With unrivaled ties on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, he talks constantly with top White House advisers, many of whom previously worked for him.

He still speaks frequently to the president, who met with him as recently as Friday morning in the Oval Office. And he remains a highly paid policy adviser to hospital, drug, pharmaceutical and other health care industry clients of Alston & Bird, the law and lobbying firm.

And, of course, the fact that Daschle is "highly paid" by the lobbying group does not influence his thinking one iota. You look doubtful? Well now, it COULD be.

Now the White House and Senate Democratic leaders appear to be moving toward a blueprint for overhauling the health system, centered on nonprofit insurance cooperatives, that Mr. Daschle began promoting two months ago as a politically feasible alternative to a more muscular government-run insurance plan.

It is an idea that happens to dovetail with the interests of many Alston & Bird clients, like the insurance giant UnitedHealth and the Tennessee Hospital Association. And it is drawing angry cries of accommodation from more liberal House Democrats bent on including a public insurance plan.

Friends and associates of Mr. Daschle say the interests of Alston & Bird’s clients have no influence on his views. They say he sees no conflict in advising private clients on the one hand and advising the White House on the other, because he offers the same assessment to everyone: Though he has often said that he favors a government-run insurance option, the Senate will not pass it.

The fact that Daschle is pushing a plan that dovetails with the interests of the people who pay him big money smells, and not of perfume. I've heard before that Daschle is quite knowledgeable about health care, and, of course, about passing legislation, but I must wonder where his true loyalty lies.

Critics, though, say his ex officio role gives Alston & Bird’s health care clients privileged insights into the policy process. They say Mr. Daschle’s multiple advisory roles illustrate the kind of coziness with the lobbying world that Mr. Obama vowed to end. If he had been confirmed as health secretary, Mr. Daschle would have been subject to strict transparency and ethics rules.

His position, some liberals say, raises at least an appearance of a conflict of interest. “I hope the president can make a decision based on what the country wants, not what a handful of Daschle’s clients want,” said Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, a leader of the progressive caucus.

No sh*t! You bet your sweet bippy that it is "at least an appearance of a conflict of interest". It seems to me that Daschle would need to be super-human to resist the pressure to lean in favor of the health care industry. Why does Obama do this sort of thing?

If the industry wants the co-ops, then they can't be good for us, right? In the end, the co-ops must benefit the industry's bottom line. They are making record profits now, and it's hard for me to believe that they will push a policy that will reduce their profits.

He [Daschle] both recommends and predicts an incremental approach.

“We are not going to see this happen overnight,” Mr. Daschle told a biotechnology trade group in May. “It can’t. It is too big a shift in the economy.” If the legislation can begin to “ramp up” coverage for all, health information technology and some cost controls, he said, “we will have succeeded.”

We will NOT have succeeded in passing real health reform. Incremental means that some will be left out in the cold. This is not my idea of reform. The progressives have already compromised by giving up on a single payer plan. Are we now to give up the public option for co-ops, whatever they are?

And then there's this from TPM:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has a proposition: If the government is going to mandate that Americans buy health insurance from private companies, they should know how much of that money actually goes to paying health insurance costs. And insurers aren't happy about it.

On Friday, Rockefeller sent letters to executives at the 15 largest health insurance companies in the country, asking them to compile data on this question for the Senate Commerce Committee by September 8.

And why not? Why shouldn't we know how much of the mandated premiums go into actual health care and how much into the pockets of the CEOs and the stockholders - and into lobbying and advertising to kill real health care reform?

"It's another page out of the same playbook," says Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans. "There's an effort to shift the focus to the health insurance industry rather than on the bills in Congress."

Damn right we need to shift the focus to the greedy.

(My emphases throughout the post)