How the Medical Industrial Complex Fed Us Tea (and Bullshit)

McCamy Taylor

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Thu Apr-16-09 04:30 PM
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How the Medical Industrial Complex Fed Us Tea (and Bullshit)

The �tea parties� were not a spontaneous event. They were carefully planned and coordinated to interfere with the Obama administration and Congress as they craft necessary (and overwhelmingly popular) legislation to fix our broken health care system. Health care in this country is broken, because we pay twice as much per person per capita for piss poor quality health compared to the countries of western Europe. Oh, and 50 million Americans can not even get the poor quality health care that the rest of us receive. They have to wait until they are 65 and qualify for Medicare in order to start playing a very expensive game of catch up.

Health care costs eat up 17% of our GNP---and the number keeps rising as Americans continue to age but do not practice disease prevention. This trend is a nightmare for the federal government, which has to pay for expensive fixes for preventable diseases. However, it is Christmas every day in America for companies that sell medical products, drugs and other end of life services---a group of companies sometimes referred to as the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC).

I will give you three guesses about what kind of business is the largest client of the lobbying firm that �Tea Party� organizer, Dick Armey works for. And the first two do not count.

I. FreedomWorks: �Mouthpiece For Hire�

The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, who is now a lobbyist.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090415/ap_on_re_us/tax_day_protests

According to SourceWatch, FreedomWorks describes itself as a �grassroots organization� founded in 1984 and chaired by former Congressman Dick Armey. In fact, the group is a front for various corporate interests. For example, in 2004, Dick Armey used the group to promote a product of Express Scripts , a huge prescription mail company.

"Critics say the arrangement could call into question FreedomWorks' tax-exempt status because it appears that the group was a 'mouthpiece' for hire," wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which noted that assertion was "sharply disputed by FreedomWorks." Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity said, "It's rare to see someone pushing a company this directly. It does look like it's more of a commercial for this company than a discussion of policy." Law professor Frances Hill noted that "corporate contributions to nonprofits are not supposed to benefit the donor." Hill added, "What it begins to look like is that the organization is operating for the private benefit of the company.�

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=FreedomWorks

Despite being a �nonprofit� organization, FreedomWorks has also tried to help those investors who want to get their greedy hands on our Social Security funds. In 2004, they had one of their employees pose as a single mother who favored Social Security privatization. Coincidentally, Armey�s lobbying firm, DLA Piper also represents a number of clients in the investment industry, like Merril Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

FreedomWork may advertise itself as a �grassroots� group, designed to counter MoveOn.org. However, the truth is clear. They are a vehicle for Astroturf lobbying.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf

Astroturf refers to apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.

FreedomWorks manipulates average citizens (like those who showed up for the �tea parties�) in order to promote a corporate agenda. What agenda? That�s easy. What companies does Armey represent in his day job?

II. Dick Armey Paid Shill for the Medical Industrial Complex

Dick Armey is a lobbyist. His firm is DLA Piper which employees more lawyers than any other company in the world. They generated $11 million in one year from their lobbying activities. Here is a list of their corporate clients.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?lname=DLA+Piper&year=

Note that one company paid them much more than any of the others, a whopping $1.5 million. Medicines Co. describes itself as

focused on advancing the treatment of critical care patients through the delivery of innovative, cost-effective medicines to the worldwide hospital marketplace.

http://www.themedicinescompany.com/about.shtml

�Critical care� patients in the United States are a big industry.

ICU care has been estimated at 1 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product and consumes 30 to 40 percent of hospital costs.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/47176.php

One percent of our GDP goes towards ICU care! Imagine that. Our current, broken health care system feeds that number by depriving tens of millions of Americans of any health care services until they are Medicare age and giving the rest of them who have insurance poor quality care that does not emphasize disease prevention. When obesity, inactivity, high blood pressure, smoking and elevated sugars are allowed to go untreated for decades, the result is a bumper crop of elderly Medicare beneficiaries with coronary heart disease, emphysema and congestive heart failure---all waiting for their rotation in the local hospital ICU. This system makes money for hospitals, money for medical specialists and (especially) money for companies like Medicines Co. which would rather see U.S. taxpayers spend thousands treating the end stages of catastrophic illness than pennies preventing that disease.

Note that DLA Piper also does a lot of business with Diageo plc which sells liquor (another big source of disease in America), General Cigar Holdings, the Interactive Gaming Council (gambling raises the blood pressure and cortisol, uses up income that could be better spent and encourages a sedentary lifestyle), Raytheon (and therefore E-Systems).

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?lname=DLA+Piper&year=

Smoking, drinking, gambling, weapons. This makes DLA Piper a veritable merchant of death----and a breeder of suffering and disease which directly benefits their biggest client, Medicines Co., which makes money off preventable illness. If the U.S. government were to decide to stop spending our tax money on tobacco subsidies and start using it to keep us healthy, through a sensible, cost effective program of universal health insurance combined with disease prevention, some of the first targets of the folks in Washington would be DLA Piper clients. Tobacco, alcohol, addicted gambling all contribute to our poor physical and mental health.

The more I read about DLA Piper, the more they remind me of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

III. Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Armey

Oh, wait. I almost forgot. DLA Piper works closely with the Cohen Group . They represent drug companies, military companies (like General Dynamics), along with a group with a suspicious sounding name, Protecting America.Org.

http://www.la-par.org/PAR%20News%20Files/TimesPic11252006.pdf

ProtectingAmerica.org is a front group for All State, which lobbies to have the federal government pick up the tab for insurance losses from disasters like hurricanes. Just another way that folks like Dick Armey have worked to increase the size of the federal deficit in order to benefit Big Business through corporate handouts, bailouts and welfare.

Speaking of bailouts, DLA Piper also worked to get Congress to pay out hundreds of millions to the "Banksters"

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/15/armey-financial-giants/

However, Armey�s lobbying firm represented three of the financial behemoths that brought the economy to its knees, necessitating such a widespread government response in the first place. In just the last year, Armey�s firm, DLA Piper, has represented:

- American International Group (AIG)

- Lehman Brothers

- Merrill Lynch

The reasons for the lobbying listed on these institutions� disclosure forms range from �Congressional hearings on financial services crisis� and tax issues to simply �policies affecting securities firms.� DLA Piper also represented TARP recipient Discover Financial Services.

You know, if you listen to what Armey says about federal spending and then look at what he actually does behind the scenes to get the federal government to spend more and more and more, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that the former Congressmen is the nation's biggest purveyor of bullshit.

IV. Give Them Tea Parties!

Go to the Tea Party website and you will see that health care reform is one of their targets.

http://www.teapartyday.com/

And here

http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/freedomworks-applauds-senate-passage-of-demint-ame

And here

http://www.futuremajority.com/node/5783

At the last link, you can see a video entitled Against Universal Health Care at the Tax Day Tea Party. At around the three minute mark, the speaker gets the frenzied crowd to boo health care reform. Because living longer, healthier, more productive lives is so un-American.

Funny thing is, if you poll Americans, they will tell you that they actually do want health care reform. From March of this year:

Seventy-two percent of those questioned in recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey say they favor increasing the federal government's influence over the country's health care system in an attempt to lower costs and provide health care coverage to more Americans, with 27 percent opposing such a move. Other recent polls show six in 10 think the government should provide health insurance or take responsibility for providing health care to all Americans.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/05/poll-do-americans-want-government-health-care-reform/

This means that when people like Texas Governor Rick Perry claim that their state will secede from the union if Washington forces them to accept universal health care, they are full of shit.