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Health insurers last year gave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce $86.2 million that was used to oppose the health-care overhaul law, according to tax records and people familiar with the donation.
“Clearly the secrecy was important to industry,” Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said in an interview. The group tracks money in politics and isn’t affiliated with a political party. “Eighty-six million dollars is an astonishing sum,” she said.
The spending reflects the insurers’ attempts to influence the bill, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will provide coverage to 32 million previously uninsured Americans, after Democrats in Congress and the White House put more focus on regulation of the insurance industry.
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The $86.2 million paid for advertisements, polling and grass roots events to drum up opposition to the bill, said Tom Collamore, a Chamber of Commerce spokesman. The Chamber said in a statement it used the funds to “advance a market-based health-care system and advocate for fundamental reform that would improve access to quality care while lowering costs.”
The organizations disclosed the funding yesterday in annual tax records required under U.S. law. The Chamber’s records show it received $86.2 million from a single group, which a second person briefed on the transaction by those involved identified as Washington-based America’s Health group.
Health insurers expressed opposition to parts of the health-care legislation while they conferred with congressional Democrats writing the bill and the White House. At the same time, the Chamber of Commerce was advertising its opposition.
The Chamber began in March 2010, weeks before the bill became law, another $10 million effort focused on pressuring lawmakers to vote against the bill. Blair Latoff, a spokeswoman for the Chamber, wouldn’t say how much of the money was spent in 2009 and how much, if any, was used in 2010.
The $86.2 million dwarfs other large donations given to the Chamber, such as a $15.4 million 2008 transaction whose contributor isn’t identified, as well an anonymous $4.5 million contribution in 2009, according to records.
By funneling the money through the Chamber, insurers were able to remain at the table negotiating with Democrats while still getting the bill criticized. “It enables you to have it both ways,” Potter said in a phone interview.
“They clearly thought the Chamber would be a more credible source of information and advertising on health-care reform, and it would appear less self-serving if a broader business group made arguments against it than if the insurers did it,” said Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
The White House criticized the insurer money in a blog post. Insurers were “desperate to preserve their ability to discriminate against you if you had a preexisting condition, drop your care when you got sick and limit the amount of care you could receive in a year or a lifetime,” wrote Stephanie Cutter, assistant to the president for special projects.
Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat who helped write the health-care law in the House, criticized the insurer spending in a letter to fellow members of Congress. “That $86 million in attack ads could have been better spent to reduce insurance premiums,” he wrote.
;"According to the CBO projections, this bill will cover 32 million of this nation’s 47 million uninsured; bringing the national total to nearly 95 percent coverage. It will reduce the deficit by roughly $138 billion over the first ten years, and by $1.2 trillion over twenty years.
According to the CBO, a non-partisan body organized to provide cost estimates on pending legislation, the health reform package would cost $940 billion over a ten-year span. It should be noted that this averages out to just $94 billion annually, and the program fits completely within the U.S. budget. "
I don't think your math is as good as the CBO.