Key health care senators have industry ties

Damn them all.


Key health care senators have industry ties
By LARRY MARGASAK and SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writers Larry Margasak And Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writers
– Fri Jun 12, 7:06 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Influential senators working to overhaul the nation's health care system have investments and family ties with some of the biggest names in the industry. The wife of Sen. Chris Dodd, the lawmaker in charge of writing the Senate's bill, sits on the boards of four health care companies.

Members of both parties have industry connections, including Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin, in addition to Dodd, and Republicans Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, John Kyl and Orrin Hatch, financial reports showed Friday.

Jackie Clegg Dodd, wife of the Connecticut Democrat, is on the boards of Javelin Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cardiome Pharma Corp., Brookdale Senior Living and Pear Tree Pharmaceuticals.

Dodd is filling in for ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will soon start work on a health care bill.

MORE DETAILS:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_go_co/us_senate_disclosures

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No, not really.

Add the health care/industrial complex to the military/indusrial complex. The latter makes war abroad and the former makes war on America.

If we don't get serious health care reform, meaning an affordable public health care option like Medicare, then this country is headed for second class status.

This country is already in hock to Asia and Europe and certain Middle Eastern oil kingdoms. The corporations have already exported eighty percent of our manufacturing jobs, the core of any economy, to Asia.

Economically and strategically, this country is approaching the political and economic situation of the Roman Empire just prior to its collapse. Kevin Phillips in his book "Wealth and Democracy" explains how all of the great empires of the past, Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, etc. collapsed due to the bankrupting of the country and the destruction of its middle class through greed, corruption, incessant foreign wars to hold on to the empire, while the power elite still maintained a lavish lifestyle, all of which drained their treasuries to bankruptcy.