Hillary Clinton’s closest advisors and top fundraisers include drug and insurance lobbyists. Clinton fought hard to force everyone to buy health insurance, and to force employers to cover all contraceptive costs through insurance. Her donor rolls include Big Pharma PACs, and drugmakers have paid her six-figure speaking fees.
Yet Clinton claims the insurers and the drugmakers are her enemies. It’s no wonder so many voters don’t trust her.
Anderson Cooper, the CNN moderator, asked candidates in the first Democratic debate, “Which enemy are you most proud of?”
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After her rival Martin O’Malley said, “The National Rifle Association,” to applause, Clinton answered, “Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians. Probably the Republicans.”
No one is surprised that Clinton considers 40 percent of the country her “enemy” because they vote against her. But her claim of mutual enmity with the industries that have long supported her strains credulity for anyone who has followed her career.
When she ran for president in 2008, Clinton raised $696,420 from “health services/HMOs,” according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That was the most any politician in history had ever raised from that industry. (Obama, as the nominee, would ultimately break Clinton’s record later that same election). Her 2006 Senate re-election had brought in $183,770 from the HMO industry, which at that time was also a new record haul from that industry.
In 2008, Clinton raised $345,234 from the “pharmaceutical manufacturing” industry, according to CRP, far more than any Republican candidate raised in that election.
Her campaign relies heavily on “bundlers” — volunteer fundraisers (“Hillraisers,” she calls them) who hustle to collect five and six figures in donations from others. Many of her bundlers, unsurprisingly, are lobbyists. Among her biggest bundlers are lobbyists for drugmakers and health insurers.
Heather Podesta is Clinton’s top K Street bundler, bringing in $320,000 as of July 30, according to Clinton’s recent FEC filings. Podesta recently picked up insurance giant Cigna as a client.
Richard Sullivan and David Jones, two lobbyists at the K Street firm Capitol Counsel, have raised a combined $314,000 for Clinton. Sullivan counts the main drug industry group — Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) — as a client. Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Roche Holdings and Sanofi are among Sullivan’s and Jones’ clients. That doesn’t look like a hostile relationship.
Pharma and insurance giants are also big donors to the Clinton Foundation, as reporter Lachlan Markay recently showed:
“Insurers Humana and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and drug company Pfizer have donated between $1 million and $5 million. Merck has given $250,000 to $500,000; AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson have donated $100,000 to $250,000.”
The Biotechnology Industry Organization, another major pharma lobby group, paid her $335,000 to give a speech last summer. Drug Chemical and Associated Technologies got Clinton to speak for a discount, at $250,000. Drugmaker Novo Nordisk got her for half that in February 2014. Combined, that’s more than $700,000 into Clinton’s personal bank account from the drug industry.
This is a small sampling of what Hillary’s avowed enemies have done to her. What has she done to them?
Recall that in the 2008 Democratic primary, Barack Obama opposed forcing all Americans to buy health insurance. Clinton was the leading advocate of that mandate, which obviously the insurers supported, and which they would later defend in court.
Clinton is also a fierce champion of the contraceptive mandate, which requires employers to cover 100 percent of the cost of their employees’ contraception — thus eliminating all price sensitivity and padding Pharma profits.
As a senator, Clinton pushed legislation to subsidize an ad campaign for emergency contraception — essentially, using taxpayer money to fund an ad campaign for Barr Laboratories, maker of Plan B. The following day, Barr’s executive VP gave her campaign $1,000. Clinton also held up a Bush nomination until the Food and Drug Administration allowed over-the-counter sales for Plan B — just after she got a campaign check from Barr’s CEO. She pushed hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies for contraceptives.
It’s also worth going way back, though, to recall Hillary’s first dance with the big insurers.
Back in 1993, the biggest insurers — Prudential, Met Life, Cigna, Aetna and Travelers — supported HillaryCare. “[T]he insurers that already had a large foothold in the HMO business would benefit greatly from the administration’s plans,” The New York Times reported.
Smaller insurers opposed HillaryCare. This drove the five giants out of the Health Insurance Association of America in order “to form their own organization, the Coalition for Managed Competition, which is closer to the administration thinking on most issues.”
Clinton has long helped drugmakers and insurers. They and their lobbyists have long helped her.
With enemies like these, who needs friends?
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
