Health Care Lobbying now a Chronic Condition in Washington

More money doled out by the government, now via the new health care legislation, means greater amounts of lobbying by Wall Street for the dough. By further centralizing the system we have merely enriched the incumbent politicians and businesses. Only moving forward towards a free market in health care can we put the medical dollar back in the patient’s pocket. Who else could better control the money than the people who earned it?

Source:  digitaland.gather.com

Yudhoyono busy lobbying counterparts in climate talks

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is actively lobbying a number of world leaders to support Indonesia’s stance on climate change he promoted in the national statement read at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Thursday.

Presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal said the President had met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd soon after reading out the statement.

He is scheduled to meet with chairman of the ASEAN and Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva later in the day as the climate conference is nearing its end.

“The core (of the talks) is to bridge the different interests between developed and developing countries to ensure a new consensus will be produced (at the climate summit),” Dino briefed reporters before the meeting with Abhisit.

On Wednesday night, Yudhoyono met with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg upon arrival in Copenhagen.

Prior to his Copenhagen stop, the President also met with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during which they agreed to ensure the success of the climate change summit.

Dino added that Yudhoyono had also sent Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa to lobby Sudan, which chairs the G77 economic group.

“There are high mistrust and big different (interests)… Presently countries are intensively lobbying one another to create a new consensus. And this might lead to a prolonged conference,” Dino said.

Yudhoyono unveiled five points in his statements at the high-level segment of the climate change summit, which was attended by some 110 world leaders.

Among the points are that he urges developed countries to cut their emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and to provide bigger amount of funds to mitigate the climate change.

Source:thejakartapost.com/

Oprah, Health Care Lobbyists, Among Recent Visitors to White House

ABC's Rachel Martin reports: Oprah Winfrey, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Texas oilman turned wind energy guru, T. Boone Pickens - those are just some of the hundreds of names included on a new batch of White House visitor logs made public yesterday.

The White House says releasing the visitors’ lists is in keeping with the Obama administration’s promise for transparency and accountability and its pledge to be the first administration to start posting all White House visitor records. They are releasing the information in batches. Last month, nearly 500 records were made public. Yesterday they posted more than 1,600 records of visits to the White House, covering the period from January 20, 2009 (President Obama’s first day in office) to August 31st, 2009.

The records reveal a large number of visits by people involved at the highest levels of the debate over health care reform, including top industry lobbyists, lawmakers and key stakeholders. Among the most notable guests – the president of the AMA, Dr. James Rohack, chief executive of AARP, Barry Rand and Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and a medical ethicist and special advisor to the White House on health care.

According to the Associated Press’ count, the most frequent visitor was Lee Sachs, the man at the Treasury Department tapped to grapple with the financial crisis.

Source:abcnews.com