Via The Wege, here's clear picture of the sort of attacks ads special interests have run against Tim Walz. We've commented before about the attack ads, as has Babaloo (Targeting Democratic Freshmen By Frightening Senior Citizens) and Christy Hardin Smith (Get Some…) at Firedoglake.
Now, the internationally respected geriatric specialist Dr. Bill Thomas writes about the attack ads:
Let's say that Congress decided to get behind some incremental changes in one part of our medical industrial economy. It could even get all optimistic and cool and call its package of proposals the “CHAMP Act.” The bill might, for example, improve coverage and benefits for children, extend Transitional Medical Assistance for people enrolled in “Welfare to Work” programs and, make it easier for elders to continue using community-based Adult Day Service Programs. Well that's exactly what it did and the AMA , AARP and National Association of Children's Hospitals have all applauded this legislation. Nice huh?
Oh, there is one more thing, CHAMP also...
“Takes into account recommendations from the non-partisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the bill refines payments for a variety of institutional providers including skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation
facilities, long-term care hospitals, cancer hospitals and rural and small urban hospitals.”It turns out that the nation's for-profit nursing home chains (and their defenders in Washington) are just not that into the cancellation of multi-billion dollar funding increases in their future revenues.
"The CHAMP Act, as it now stands in the House Ways and Means Committee, is highly detrimental to the long term care needs of 'America's Greatest Generation' as well as future generations - contrary to the claims being made by its proponents," stated Bruce Yarwood, President and CEO of AHCA.
So what does a big-time Washington lobbyist do?
How about running attack ads directed specifically at freshman Representatives who dared voted against the perceived interests of the nursing home industry? Here is the ad being run against Tim Walz in Minnesota's First Congressional District.
Congressman's Walz's is pushing back against the nursing home industry's fearmongering.
“For too long, these private insurance companies and big nursing home chains have reaped the benefits of Medicare overpayments, and when I voted for the CHAMP Act, I voted for legislation that will help the most vulnerable of our community: our low-income children and seniors.
The people of the First District don’t have to buy expensive and deceptive ads. They don’t have to hire expensive lobbyists. People in southern Minnesota can be confident that I have and will continue to cast votes that are in the interest of our children and seniors, no matter how many full page, color ads costing thousands of dollars the special interest groups can buy.”
Read the full text of his statement here.
So what's new? Congress withdraws promised increases in the nursing home industry's funding stream. The industry's lobby lashes out at the CHAMP Act's Congressional supporters (especially freshmen). Little changes. Another battle is won, lost or drawn.
It is easy to see that the American medical industry is huge and exceptionally powerful. Each component of that industry holds a laser focus on its own needs first and foremost. Each component has its own individual war chest that it can you to attack elected officials who refuse to do its bidding.
It is also easy to see that the public supports fundamental change in our health care system. Hundreds of millions of people can see and are appalled by the waste, the injustice and the failure to produce the quality health care outcomes enjoyed by citizens of other industrial nations. Despite the urgent need for reform, nothing happens.
A bit more about the doctor rising to Walz's defense:
Dr. Bill Thomas is an international authority on geriatric medicine and eldercare. He is a professor at the Erickson School and has been heavily involved in the culture change movement to promote elderhood as an honorable and valuable position in our society. He is the founder of the Eden Alternative, a philosophy and program that de-institutionalized nursing homes world-wide over the past 20 years. Most recently he developed the Green House, a radically new approach to long term care where nursing homes are torn down and replaced with small, home-like environments where people can live a full and interactive life. In 2005, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a five-year ten million dollar grant to support the launch of Green House projects in all fifty states. Dr. Thomas graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1986, and was selected by the Mead Johnson Foundation as one of the top Family Medicine residents in the country during his three-year residency at the University of Rochester . He earned board certification in Family Medicine in 1992 and added a certificate in Geriatrics in 1994. Dr. Thomas also maintains a part-time appointment as Assistant Clinical Professor in Family Medicine for Upstate Medical Center . . .
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