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Though I have the feeling they'd just take more money from the pharmaceutical industry(among others), "under the table" of course, to make up for it and then use some of THAT to pay for their health care, and to also of course pay for more airtime for their "commercials" for their re-election on TV come very election.
There is a very good reason the pharmaceutical companies have so many lobbyists, self preservation. Whenever government decides it needs to regulate an industry or goes after a company that industry or company needs to defend itself. A perfect case in point is Microsoft. They used to have just one lobbyist in Washington DC. Then in the 1990’s the justice department decided to destroy it. Now Microsoft has an army of lobbyists just to forestall the next governmental attack upon it. Wal-Mart has the same story, they now have lots of lobbyists but used to have very few. Oil, insurance, banking, investment, manufacturing, and many other industries all have lots of lobbyists for the simple reason that big government, and those that love big government, want to tax and regulate all those industries.
Of healthcare sectors only one has almost no lobbyists, the Veterinarians. Why? Because the government pretty much leaves them alone. If the government starts messing with them the same way they do MD’s you can be sure they will soon have an army of lobbyists too, and we will pay for them in out vet bills as we do for the medical professions in our healthcare costs.
The only way to reduce the power of lobbyists is to reduce the power and scope of government.
We all like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists. But when push comes to shove most of us are sheep who do what we are told. Worst of all, a lot of us become unpaid agents of whoever is controlling the agenda by enforcing the current dogma on the few rugged individualists who actually exist.
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