Sebelius Asked Companies to Support Health Care Law
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department and urged them to help a nonprofit group promote President Obama’s health care law.
She identified the companies as Johnson & Johnson, the drug maker; Ascension Health, a large Roman Catholic health care system; and Kaiser Permanente, the health insurance plan.
At a hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Ms. Sebelius said she did not explicitly ask the companies for money, but urged them to support the work of the nonprofit group, Enroll America.
The group, led by former Obama administration officials, is working with the White House to publicize the 2010 health care law and help uninsured people sign up for coverage.
Republicans in Congress have raised questions about the legality and propriety of Ms. Sebelius’s fund-raising efforts, saying she was trying to circumvent limits on spending set by Congress.
However, Ms. Sebelius said she was following well-established precedents. For example, she said, the Clinton administration established “public-private partnerships” to encourage enrollment in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the administration of President George W. Bush worked with pharmaceutical companies and insurers to help Medicare beneficiaries sign up for prescription drug coverage.
Ms. Sebelius said that no federal law prevented her from trying to raise money from companies regulated by her department. However, she said, she voluntarily decided not to make fund-raising appeals to such companies.
Ms. Sebelius said that she had made a total of five calls soliciting support for Enroll America, and that she did not know if anyone else in her department had also done so. She said she “never discussed” the solicitations with anyone at the White House.
Administration officials said previously that Ms. Sebelius had solicited donations from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is devoted exclusively to public health, and H&R Block, the tax preparation service, which sees a large role for itself in helping low- and middle-income people apply for tax credits that can be used to buy private health insurance under the law.
Critics of Health Care Law Outspending Its Supporters on Ads
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
WASHINGTON — Seven months before the core provisions of President Obama’s health care law are to take effect, most television advertising that mentions the law continues to come from its opponents.
Since the law’s passage in March 2010, critics have spent a total of about $400 million on television ads that refer to it, according to a new analysis by the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, which tracks such spending. Supporters have spent less than a quarter of that — about $75 million — on ads that cast the law in a positive light, according to the analysis.
The biggest advertiser in support of the law has been the Department of Health and Human Services, which has run educational ads that mention it. Most of the negative ads have come from Republican outside groups, including Crossroads GPS, which was founded by Karl Rove and other top Republican strategists, and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Spending on ads that mention the law dropped steeply after last fall’s presidential election — only about $4 million has been spent since then, according to Kantar, including $2.5 million on ads that are critical of the law and $1.5 million on ads promoting it. Recent negative ads have come from Republican political candidates like former Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who won a special election for a House seat last month, and from conservative advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity.
In North Carolina, Americans for Prosperity has a new 30-second ad celebrating “a new day” in North Carolina politics because of “a fresh crop of leaders” who are “bringing conservative reforms.” Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, won election there last fall, giving the party full control in the state for the first time in more than a century. “The threat of Obamacare? Minimized,” the narrator says. Like a number of other Republican states, North Carolina has declined to expand Medicaid as called for under the law.
Some of the recent negative ads have next year’s elections in mind. The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, an outside group, ran an ad last month in Lexington and Louisville praising Senator Mitch McConnell for opposing the health care law. Mr. McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, is up for re-election in Kentucky next year. “It’s already causing layoffs,” the narrator says of the law. “Higher premiums are next. Mitch McConnell saw it coming. Leading the fight against Obamacare.”
Ditto for Healthcare!! - SPC:
The billionaire force behind GOP attempts to dismantle Maine’s renewable energy standards
Posted June 04, 2013, at 12:22 p.m.
Put into effect nearly 15 years ago with bipartisan support, Maine’s Renewable Portfolio Standard has created thousands of jobs, cut down on harmful pollution and helped to keep more of Mainers’ energy dollars in the state. Requiring 30 percent of the state’s energy providers’ electricity sales to come from renewables such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydroelectric power, it has also led to tremendous investment by renewable energy companies that are paying more than $17 million annually in property taxes and employing more than 2,500 Mainers.
Simply put, the Renewable Portfolio Standard is working — for everyday Mainers and businesses alike. In light of our struggling economy, programs such as the RPS should be celebrated and protected. So what could possibly have motivated Gov. Paul LePage to devote an entire weekly radio address to attacking the program? And why are some elected officials pushing legislation that would dismantle it?
A new report by the Maine Conservation Alliance, Maine’s Majority Education Fund and Maine People’s Alliance, issued earlier this month, sheds some light on the powerful forces fueling LePage and his allies’ efforts to weaken Maine’s RPS: Charles and David Koch, billionaire industrialists from Kansas and owners of the second largest private company in the U.S. with revenues estimated at $100 billion a year.
The Kochs have an aggressive network of front groups at their behest in our state, which they leverage frequently to help them promote and pursue their financial interests. These groups operate for the most part behind the scenes in the form of think tanks, campaigns, nonprofit organizations and legislative PACs. The activities of this network are deceptive by design to mask their deep self-interest: The Kochs have no stake in the long-term viability of our state, aside from making sure that the policies in place bolster their bottom line.
The process goes something like this: Businesses affiliated with the Kochs (including oil and gas companies such as ExxonMobil) give vast sums of money to groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, a membership organization that drafts conservative model bills that are introduced by legislators who are ALEC members and receive campaign donations from ALEC-affiliated groups. Once a bill is introduced, Americans for Prosperity, another national, Koch-connected group with a chapter in Maine, mobilizes to promote the legislation and attack any legislative opponents. In tandem with these efforts, the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative, free-market think-tank that is a member of the Koch-funded State Policy Network, will often push out reports funded by the same corporate interests that stand to benefit from their conclusions.
Dust off ideas on health care
Posted Feb. 22, 2010, at 6:17 p.m.
This is the second of two articles about desperate efforts to control health care costs.
Among the other mothers of invention I know (necessity, alcohol, getting caught by your mother sneaking to an R-rated movie, etc.) is desperation. Desperate times drive us to seek answers in ideas we never would consider when times are good, and these are desperate times in health care reform.
Sometimes desperate answers are lousy (see Part I in my Feb. 9 column), but among the piles of ideas in the smoldering ruins of the national health care debate are many worth pulling out of the debris, dusting off and pursuing. Here are a few of those many, with my twists:
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