These are the people who will help destroy healthcare

Want to know why the best case scenario for comprehensive health care reform is a shitty watered down bill that will most likely not have public plan and thus moist likely won't do anything? I mean other than because of the idiots we elect. You guessed it: lobbyists. The Health Care Industry, in it's valiant quest to spend more money lobbying against reform than it could ever possibly lose if it passed, has decided to take the nation's job woes on its shoulders and hire anyone that used to work in Congress to lobby everyone who still does.

The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.
...
The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention.

That's always a good sign, when lifelong political hacks are even staggered by the size and effort of a lobbying campaign. One must applaud the scope of it too. For every member they want to lobby the Health Care Industry seems to have about 4 or 5 of that representative's former high level staffers on the payroll to do it. Heath Care companies need to talk to finance chair Max Baucus? They get his last 2 Chiefs of Staff. Chris Dodd? Get his former Subcommittee Director who only worked for him on matters of health care and pharmaceuticals. Or just hire a former Senator or Rep to do it. Do you want to talk to a Finance Chair or an influential Senator about how better health care would help you out? Write a letter and hope an intern reads it and deigns to send you a form letter in return.

The article is good for a couple of humorous quotes about people tut-tutting the revolving door between Congress/lobbying and then a few choice words about "how just because they hire former staffers doesn't mean those staffer get preferential treatment with their old bosses." Which is why I guess the Heath Care Industry spends all that money in record levels: because it doesn't work. So don't worry, what the spirit of "bipartisanship" and "compromise" doesn't make bad enough in the final bill will be made worse by lobbyists. At least we know there was something helpful to citizens in the public plan proposals, otherwise a large industry wouldn't be trying to smother it in the crib. Rest easy America, the adults have stepped in to tell us what's best.