AHIP Lobbyist To GOP: Don't Give "Comfort To The Enemy" On Health Care

[kpete]

Source: Huffington Post

AHIP Lobbyist To GOP: Don't Give "Comfort To The Enemy" On Health Care

First Posted: 10-22-09 09:52 AM | Updated: 10-22-09 11:23 AM


A top lobbyist for the major private insurance industry trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), urged Congressional Republicans to not even consider helping Democrats pass health care reform lest they aid an "enemy who is down."

Steve Champlin, a lobbyist for the Duberstein Group who represents AHIP, declared that the road to a bipartisan health care reform bill was, essentially, dead. And he urged GOP members to keep it that way.

...................

"Long before the Republicans discovered that the House bill was a strategy to kill seniors and all that kind of stuff the plan was already unpopular," he added, underscoring why Republicans shouldn't attach themselves to the legislation.

The remarks came during the opening session of AHIP's annual State Issues Conference in which both Champlin and his co-panelist seemed to concede that reform would pass and will include a variation of a public option for insurance coverage.




Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/ahip-lobbyist-to-gop-dont_n_329828.html

[berni_mccoy]

1. Wow, they are delusional if they think it is dead. And, btw, the enemy of AHIP is every American

[shraby]

2. I think what they were saying is that the bipartisanship part

of the idea is dead, not that the bill is.

[wysimdnwyg]

5. "Wow, they are delusional"

You could have stopped there...

[roguevalley]

11. I wish I lived next door to him so I could dump his garbage cans

on his lawn. Among other things.

[supernova]

3. The AHIP needs to be neutered

KnR

[Turbineguy]

4. The enemy being

the American people.

[FiveGoodMen]

9. Yes, exactly!

And if we are their enemy, then they are ours.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. isn't Duberstein that fat, obnoxious fuckwad who

thinks that Iran is ready to attack the US and Israel, that the Iraq invasion was great, and that Cheney should run for president?

[Altoid_Cyclist]

10. The Reagan link alone is all that we need to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Duberstein

[izquierdista]

7. The future of AHIP

People in the zeppelin business found new jobs too.

[drm604]

8. So they're outright admitting that the GOP is on the side of the insurance companies.

This doesn't seem like a wise tactic.

[No Elephants]

12. "Long before the Republicans discovered the House bill was a strategy to kill seniors

and all that kind of stuff..."

Well, when you have that kind of truth, not to mention an erudite way with words, who can possibly argue with you?

[eridani]

13. The idea of reform is wildly popular

The absence of concrete benefits to people before 2013 will be wildly unpopular.