Reaping Profit After Assisting on Health Law

New York Times ^ | September 17, 2013 | SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

[reaganaut1]

WASHINGTON — Washington’s health care revolving door is spinning fast as the new online health insurance marketplaces, a central provision of President Obama’s health care law, are set to open Oct. 1. Those who had a hand in the law’s passage are now finding lucrative work in the private sector, as businesses try to understand the complex measure, reshape it by pressing for regulatory changes — or profit from it.

That means boom times for what might be called an Obamacare cottage industry, providing work for dozens of former administration and mostly Democratic Congressional officials whose immersion in health policy minutiae, and friendships, make them invaluable to private business.

Dr. Dora Hughes, for example, has a medical degree from Vanderbilt and a master’s in public health from Harvard and never envisioned joining a law firm. But Dr. Hughes, a former Obama administration official, has something Washington lawyers and lobbying shops covet: an insider’s understanding of the new health care law.

After nearly four years as counselor to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, she left government last year to work for Sidley Austin, which represents insurers, pharmaceutical companies, device makers and others affected by the law. She is not a registered lobbyist, but rather a “strategic adviser,” although some call that a distinction without a difference.

“Health policy is what I do,” Dr. Hughes said in a recent interview. “It’s what I’ve always done, so I’m not doing anything differently. My work is not based only on relationships or trying to curry favor.”

The health care industry now spends more money on lobbying in Washington than any sector of the economy — more than $243 million last year alone, slightly higher than the $242 million spent by financial, insurance and real estate companies

[God luvs America]

“That means boom times for what might be called an Obamacare cottage industry, providing work for dozens of former administration and mostly Democratic Congressional officials whose immersion in health policy minutiae, and friendships, make them invaluable to private business. “

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funny...when GWB was in office this would be constantly referred to as cronyism....

[MulberryDraw]

Lucrative times for those in the “obamacare cottage industry” while the working masses get the shaft from the obamination. Isn’t that swell.

[Buckeye McFrog]

That’s why the Pubbies don’t want to repeal it. A whole lot of people are getting REALLY, REALLY RICH in the effort to implement it. Many of them big GOP donors.

[Graewoulf]

Why not have the true Republicans request a BINDING, updated, “Federal Financial Impact Statement” for 2012-2013 for Obama”care?”

It should take a month or two to complete, allow for a vote to delay Obama”care” for a year, and then show the great financial harm to our Economy that the Statement’s numbers will document.

Wharton, Stanford, Michigan and Princeton could also file their independent Financial Impact Statements to compare to the Office of Budget and the Congressional Budget Office Financial Impact Statements.

As B. Hussein is fond of saying: “We need to get all the facts first.”