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News :: Elections & Legislation |
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Networks Don't Follow The Money In Medicare Story |
Current rating: 0 |
by FAIR
(No verified email address) |
03 Dec 2003
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The actual political gold that Bush and the legislators who voted for the bill will receive-- in the form of millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions-- was apparently not worth reporting. |
NEW YORK - December 2 - The nightly network newscasts devoted significant broadcast time to the debate over the restructuring of Medicare. But while some reports described the corporate interests that stood to gain under the plan to offer a prescription drug benefit, few addressed the question of why Congress would pass a law so beneficial to the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries. In short, network news failed to heed the old advice: follow the money.
A CBS Evening News report-- aired on November 25, after the bill had passed-- mentioned that the "biggest corporate winner by far is the drug industry itself, mostly because under the new law Medicare is barred from negotiating drug discounts." Such admissions were not uncommon. But left unmentioned was the fact that pharmaceutical companies, as well as health insurers and HMOs, are big contributors to the same politicians who cast the votes on this legislation.
The pharmaceutical industry gave $21.7 million to Republicans and $7.6 million to Democrats in the last election cycle alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The insurance sector gave $11.7 million to Democrats and $25.9 million to Republicans during the same time frame.
In fact, those contributions, the CRP has found, were a fairly reliable indicator of how a given member of Congress voted on the bill: House Republicans who supported the bill got more than three times as much pharmaceutical money as the minority of Republican opponents; the handful of Democratic supporters in the House received more than twice the health insurance contributions taken in by Democrats who voted no (Capital Eye, 11/24/03).
The simple fact that the "winners" in the Medicare debate were also big political contributors was mentioned in only one report in the weeks before the bill passed, according to a search of the Nexis database. This was a November 23 segment on ABC's World News Tonight. Correspondent Jake Tapper noted that "buried in the energy and Medicare bills are goodies for many corporations," and he referred to a report by the group Common Cause describing "Bush policies that directly benefit contributors' companies. The Medicare bill should boost earnings for Pfizer, the Federation of American Hospitals and Johnson & Johnson." Tapper also raised another important point: "Campaign contributors not only sometimes benefit from laws their favored politicians support, they also often help write them as they did with these two bills."
In another ABC World News Tonight report (10/19/03), on the health insurance industry, ABC medical correspondent Tim Johnson noted, "With tremendous clout in Washington-- the industry spent more than $37 million on political donations last year-- reform has been slow in coming."
Unfortunately, reporting that tied the Medicare bill's benefits for the healthcare industries with those industries' generosity to politicians was extremely rare. Back in July, CBS Evening News aired a report on the Medicare issue by Joie Chen (7/25/03) that made the connection:
*Chen: Lawmakers were blunt about the influence drug companies have on the debate.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D.-Ill.): There's a pharmaceutical lobbyist and a half for every member of Congress. They have spent over $100 million in contributions, entertainment and lobbying expenses all focused on us.
Chen: And expect that influence to increase this fall as the House and Senate try to work out their differences over how to fix Medicare and make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors.
***
But whether that influence increased or not, CBS never again mentioned pharmaceutical or other healthcare industry contributions in its coverage of the Medicare debate.
NBC Nightly News, meanwhile, seems to have never mentioned the Medicare bill and healthcare industry campaign contributions in the same story all year. When NBC analyzed the politics of the Medicare debate (11/24/03), reporter David Gregory claimed that "the president knew keeping a campaign promise on prescription drugs could be a key to his re-election," explaining that "it's older Americans who will make up crucial voting block next year, an estimated one out of every four votes." Bush, according to Gregory, pushed the Medicare bill because he calculated that "this campaign promise could result in political gold." The actual political gold that Bush and the legislators who voted for the bill will receive-- in the form of millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions-- was apparently not worth reporting.
ACTION: Encourage ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News to do more reporting on the role of campaign contributions in congressional debates. Tell NBC Nightly News that covering such debates without even mentioning political donations is not responsible journalism.
CONTACT: ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
mailto:PeterJennings (at) abcnews.com
CBS Evening News
Phone: 212-975-3691
mailto:evening (at) cbsnews.com
NBC Nightly News
Phone: 212-664-4971
mailto:nightly (at) nbc.com
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair (at) fair.org with your correspondence. |
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Health Industry Bidding To Hire Medicare Chief |
by Robert Pear
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 Dec 2003
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — The federal official who runs Medicare and was intimately involved in drafting legislation to overhaul the program is the object of a bidding war among five firms hoping to hire him to advise clients affected by the measure.
Though the official, Thomas A. Scully, is not widely known outside Washington, his exhaustive knowledge of the Medicare program and the intricacies of the legislation, approved by Congress last week, would make him a prize catch for any law firm or private equity firm.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Scully said that his discussions with potential employers complied with federal ethics regulations and that he had seen no reason to recuse himself from work on the legislation. He said he had consulted with the top ethics officer for the Department of Health and Human Services and received a waiver allowing him to continue work on the bill. The department confirmed his account.
Mr. Scully has made no secret of the fact that he has been looking for jobs outside the government for more than six months — even as he spent hundreds of hours in closed sessions with House and Senate negotiators working out countless details of the legislation, which makes the biggest changes in Medicare since creation of the program in 1965.
Experts on the federal ethics law said they could not judge the propriety of Mr. Scully's actions without knowing the terms of the waiver, which have not been made public.
Mr. Scully said Tuesday evening, after several earlier interviews about his job negotiations, that he was submitting a letter of resignation and would step down on Dec. 16. He said he had not decided which of the five jobs to take.
Gail E. Shearer, a health policy analyst at Consumers Union, said Mr. Scully's discussions with prospective employers were troubling. "At a time when there are questions about whether the Medicare legislation serves special interests or consumers, we want to know that our public officials have their minds totally focused on doing what's best for consumers," she said.
For his part, Mr. Scully said, "I'm not the most popular guy in the world, but nobody has ever accused me of being other than honest."
After federal employees resign, they are subject to a permanent ban on "switching sides." They cannot try to influence the government on a "particular matter" in which they were personally and substantially involved. In addition, federal law establishes a one-year "cooling-off period," during which former senior officials are not supposed to lobby at all before the agencies where they worked. But they often give clients informal advice about navigating the federal bureaucracy.
President Bush plans to sign the Medicare bill, a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, on Monday. The bill not only offers drug coverage to all 40 million beneficiaries, but also changes Medicare payments to most health care providers.
Mr. Scully, who served as a White House budget official in the first Bush administration, has run Medicare and Medicaid since May 2001.
In the interview on Tuesday, Mr. Scully said that he tentatively decided last May to leave the government but that he stayed on, at the request of the Bush administration, to work on the Medicare bill.
"I have been talking to a number of law firms and private equity firms," he said. "My hope is to combine work at a Washington law firm and a Wall Street investment firm."
Mr. Scully said that after consulting with the ethics officer he saw no reason to disqualify himself from work on the legislation or on regulations that affected clients of the five firms.
"My job negotiations were not serious enough," he said.
A summary of ethics rules issued by the Department of Health and Human Services says employees who have begun seeking jobs in the private sector must immediately recuse themselves from "any official matter" that involves the prospective employer. This covers legislative initiatives and proposed rules, the document says.
A spokesman for the department said that Mr. Scully's waiver allowed him to work on "matters of general applicability like the Medicare reform bill" while he talked to potential employers.
As administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Mr. Scully receives a salary of $134,000 a year. Lawyers and lobbyists said he could easily earn five times that in the private sector because he has extensive knowledge of the Medicare program and can offer clients access to senior administration officials.
In his last job, as president of the Federation of American Hospitals, a trade group for investor-owned hospitals, Mr. Scully made $675,000 a year.
No one has suggested that Mr. Scully took any position in return for a job offer. In some cases, he took positions contrary to those of the lobbyists with whom he was discussing employment. But sometimes their positions coincided.
Mr. Scully said he had been talking with three law firms and two private investment firms. He identified them as follows:
* Alston & Bird. The firm, based in Atlanta, represents the National Association for Home Care and Johnson & Johnson, among other clients. The Washington office is headed by a college friend of Mr. Scully's and includes Bob Dole, the former Senate Republican leader.
* Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. The firm represents the Disease Management Association of America, which scored a major victory in the Medicare bill, authorizing payment for services provided by its members to people with chronic illnesses. The firm, which includes Linda H. Daschle, wife of the Senate Democratic leader, has also represented the American Association for Homecare, Amgen and the Federation of American Hospitals.
* Ropes & Gray. The firm, based in Boston, represents the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the main lobby for the brand-name drug industry. It focused on changes in drug patent laws, one of the hottest issues in the Medicare bill. It also represents many drug companies including Abbott Laboratories, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Novartis and Pfizer.
* Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. A private equity investment firm based in New York, it has invested in many health care businesses. It has a major stake in U.S. Oncology, which manages cancer treatment centers and lobbied for more adequate payments under the Medicare bill.
* Texas Pacific Group. A private investment partnership, it manages assets worth more than $13 billion. It helped rescue Oxford Health Plans, which suffered severe financial problems while Mr. Scully was a member of Oxford's board.
James C. Duff, managing partner in the Washington office of Baker, Donelson, said: "Our firm would be a perfect fit for Tom because we have built one of the top health care practices in the country. We do both legal and lobbying work. Tom's recent experience at the highest levels of the government makes him very attractive to our firm."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
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