Crusading Physician Calls for Resignation of Key “Reform” Senator

(San Francisco, CA) In today’s Congress, even the most blatant venality is tolerated, if it is even noticed. But according to Len Saputo, MD—health-care reform crusader and noted author—rarely has one Congressperson flaunted norms of financial decency as has Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, the lead Congressional committee working on health care reform.
As far back as 2007, Senator Baucus began holding hearings and making preparations for this year’s reform debate. “That’s when the big money began to flow into the Senator’s coffers from all sectors of the health care industry,” Dr. Saputo pointed out.
“A flood of political gifts from all sectors of the industry he is regulating reached a peak in the first half of 2009, just as the national debate took center stage.”
What’s been the tally for the Senator? In 2008 alone, Baucus received $1,148,775 from the health sector and $285,850 from the insurance sector. The high rate of cash
flow continued into 2009, until Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from
health-care political action committees after June 1. Why? Yet, this weak gesture toward
basic ethics did not even apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who have continued
to make sizable contributions, according to the Washington Post on July 21.
“And that’s why, in light of this thinly veiled bribery, I call today for Senator
Baucus to resign his position as chair of this crucial committee,” Saputo said.
Of course, Baucus’s behavior is only emblematic of a malady that taints most of
Congress, especially with respect to the health-care lobby, which leads all other
industries in donations to Congressional candidates. Health-industry lobbyists gave
nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to
Democrats, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Charles
E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators whose votes could prove crucial in a final
health-care reform deal, as well as the leaders of five key committees leading the debate,
received the greatest amounts. Grassley, the key Republican on the Senate Finance
Committee, has received more than $2 million. House Ways and Means Chairman
Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) took in $1.6 million from the health sector over the past two
years; ranking Republican Dave Camp (Mich.) received nearly $1 million.
But Baucus stands out for having collected $3 million from the health and
insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, about 20 percent of the total, the data show.

Our nearly seventy combined years of practicing medicine [note: this piece is coauthored by Len Saputo, MD and Stacia Lansman, MD, with Byron Belitsos] has taught us this, if anything: Be wary whenever “big pharma” is part of any health campaign from which it stands to profit. And this is all the more true when it comes to emergency immunizations like the coming swine flu vaccine. Like most everything else in modern medicine that concerns pharmaceuticals, the swine flu scare is surrounded by worrying signs of questionable science, corporate-dominated politics, and obvious conflicts of interest—in this case on a global scale.

The first and cardinal point to understand is that, at the moment, the current strain of swine flu is not more dangerous than the average flu; in fact, if corrected for seasonal variation, far more people die from regular influenza virus every day. About 100 people on average die daily from the ordinary flu in the U.S. according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics. Yet this number is more than ten times the rate of death from H1N1 worldwide since its outbreak in April. (1)

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