Obamacare: $2.6 Trillion in Change Special Interests Can Believe In
A new paper, co-written by former HHS official Joel Ario and released online by Health Affairs yesterday, talks about special interest lobbying both prior to and after the enactment of Obamacare. The article profiles various industries, and explains why they have offered support for the law:
- Insurers stand to benefit from $1 trillion in new revenues, thanks to Obamacare forcing individuals to buy coverage on pain of taxation;
- Provider groups think that “expanding coverage is good business;”
- Employers believe “Exchanges may provide a smooth path to a new system of individual-based insurance,” meaning firms will be able to dump their workers and shed their costs on to the federal government – a strategy which Ario himself publicly supported while at HHS;
- Patient groups like AARP have also supported the law, although the article did not point out what a House Ways and Means Committee report issued last year did: That AARP has a billion reasons to support Obamacare.
Ario and his co-author note that all these Obamacare giveaways have been financially beneficial to the health care sector: “The large influx of new paying customers helped the bottom line for some health care businesses. On Wall Street, the valuation of the health sector has risen 36 percent since the passage of health reform in 2010, four times faster than the rate of increase of the Standard and Poor’s 500 average.” They add that special interests have spent much of the past several years lobbying for more waivers and favors from the Obama Administration:
The leading representatives of business, insurers, providers, and patients have privately negotiated aggressively with government officials to wrest further concessions in exchange for their support or their retreat from earlier opposition. From the perspective of stakeholders, influence on critical implementation decisions is more efficacious than joining the rabble at a town-hall meeting or squandering resources on a national advertising campaign when the key decision makers are few in number and squirreled away in government agencies.
Some may find it surprising that a former Administration official like Ario – who left HHS to “cash in” with a lucrative law-and-consulting gig – would co-author an article discussing “rabble” at town hall meetings. Some would also find it surprising his public admission that backroom lobbying – aka cutting a “rock-solid deal” away from the C-SPAN cameras – is far preferable to engaging with actual constituents. Then again, even Jack Abramoff admitted last week that Obamacare is a massive giveaway to special interest lobbyists and their clients, “who want to use the government as a bludgeon against competition.” So when it comes to Obamacare’s $2.6 trillion in new spending, granting backroom deals for special interest lobbyists is just another day at the office.