As Timothy Carney documents for Washington Examiner readers, the biggest beneficiaries of the 2010 federal health care law are those most responsible for writing it.
Dr. Dora Hughes spent the last few years inside the Obama administration shaping the Affordable Care Act. Now she gets paid to help health-care companies profit from it. She has monetized the expertise and connections she gained as a public servant, profitably putting them to work for private interests.
She’s the latest participant in the Great Healthcare Cashout I warned of once the bill passed, and the New York Times is ON IT:
After nearly four years as counselor to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, she left government last year to work for Sidley Austin, which represents insurers, pharmaceutical companies, device makers and others affected by the law. She is not a registered lobbyist, but rather a “strategic adviser,” although some call that a distinction without a difference.
The Times names a few other Obamacare authors now helping the affected companies turn the bill into profit: Liz Fowler, who went Baucus to Wellpoint to Baucus to HHS to Johnson & Johnson; Yvette Fontenot, who went Finance Committee to White House to K Street; Nancy Ann DeParle, who went White House to a health-care investment shop; Bob Kocher, from the White House to a health-care VC firm; Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., whose vote for Obamacare cost him his seat but won him a lucrative K Street gig; and Elizabeth Engel from HHS To Glover Park Group.
There are others the Times could have named. Since 2010, I’ve counted at least 30 congressional Obamacare authors who have become health-care lobbyists or consultants.
I had predicted this the moment the bill passed: “Health care reform means it’s always Christmas on K Street.” And, “You’ll also see the Democratic staffers who wrote the bill rewarded with plush lobbying gigs.”
