HOT DOCUMENT: Good Things Come To Those Who Sellout The Public Option For A Little Filthy Lucre

CNN: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in comments at separate news conferences, said they would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance – whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats. Pelosi, who said as recently as Tuesday that a public option was essential for passing a health-care bill in the House, on Thursday used language on the issue similar to Obama’s speech. MORE

OPEN LEFT: This announcement came just hours before Steve Elmendorf, a registered UnitedHealth lobbyist and the head of UnitedHealth’s lobbying firm Elmendorf Strategies, blasted this email invitation throughout Washington, D.C. MORE

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From: Steve Elmendorf [mailto:steve@elmendorfstrategies.com]
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 8:31 AM
Subject: event with Speaker Pelosi at my home
You are cordially invited to a reception with

Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi

Thursday, September 24, 2009
6:30pm ~ 8:00pm

At the home of
Steve Elmendorf
2301 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apt. 7B
Washington, D.C.

$5,000 PAC
$2,400 Individual

To RSVP or for additional information please contact
Carmela Clendening at (202) 485-3508 or clendening@dccc.org

Steve Elmendorf
ELMENDORF STRATEGIES
GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS SOLUTIONS
900 7th Street NW Suite 750  Washington DC 20001
(202) 737-1655

DAILY KOS: Elmendorf Strategies is a registered lobbying firm for UnitedHealth, the powerhouse health insurer’s group operating Ovations, AmeriChoice, Uniprise, OptumHealth, Ingenix, and Prescription Solutions.  In 2008, the company posted a net income of $3 billion. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: As matters now stand, the insurance companies claim $450 billion a year of our health-care dollars. They will fight hard to hold on to this bonanza. Consider the campaign funds given to the chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over health-care legislation. Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat, and his political action committee have received nearly $4 million from the health-care lobby since 2003. The ranking Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, has received more than $2 million. It’s a mistake for one politician to judge the personal motives of another. But Sens. Baucus and Grassley are firm opponents of the single-payer system, as are other highly placed members of Congress who have been generously rewarded by the insurance lobby. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: While recent polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans favor health care reform that included a so-called public option that would provide coverage for the estimated 45 millions Americans with no health insurance, one man is doing everything in his power to make sure this does not happen, going so far as to spend $5 million of his own money to bankroll TV ads designed to scare American public off the path of health care reform with visions of a socialized medicine hell where the right to choose is forcibly surrendered to Big Brother, government bureaucrats dictate diagnosis and treatment to doctors, and pain-riddled patients wait months or years for critical care. (Actually, if you replace ‘Big Brother’ with ‘HMO’ and ‘government bureaucrats’ with ‘corporate bean counters’ you have our current system.) MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Meet Dick Scott, Public Option Enemy Number One