Last Friday, LittleSis got a fantastic mention from veteran reporters Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on Salon.com. You know Bill Moyers from his excellent Sunday interview show, Bill Moyers Journal.

The Senate Finance Committee will be voting on Sen. Max Baucus‘ health reform bill tomorrow and the healthcare lobby has been doing its job overtime the past few weeks. This makes the healthcare research we’ve done all the more pertinent, which Moyers and Winship recognized.

Here’s an excerpt:

You can’t tell the players without a scorecard in the old Washington shell game. Lobbyist out, lobbyist in. It’s why they always win. They’ve been plowing this ground for years, but with the broad legislative agenda of the Obama White House — healthcare, energy, financial reform, the Employee Free Choice Act and more — the soil has never been so fertile.

The healthcare industry alone has six lobbyists for every member of Congress and more than 500 of them are former congressional staff members, according to the Public Accountability Initiative’s LittleSis database.

Just to be certain Congress sticks with the program, the industry has been showering megabucks all over Capitol Hill. From the beginning, they wanted to make sure that whatever bill comes out of the Finance Committee puts for-profit insurance companies first — by forcing the uninsured to buy medical policies from them. Money not only talks, it writes the prescriptions.

Moyers and Winship label the crossover of these former Hill employees a “friendly takeover of government, a leveraged buyout of democracy.” In light of the healthcare debate, we thank the authors for highlighting this standard Washington practice that shouldn’t be so standard.

We’ve gotten two great mentions of our health care research this week in Politico and The Huffington Post.

Politico congressional reporter Manu Raju names Liz Fowler, Sen. Baucus’ current health adviser and former WellPoint lobbyist; Mark Hayes, Sen. Grassley’s health counsel who is married to a health care lobbyist; Frederick Isasi, Sen. Bingaman’s health policy adviser and former lobbyist at Powell Goldstein; and Kate Spaziani, senior health policy aide to Sen. Conrad, also a registered lobbyist at Powell Goldstein.

Raju writes:

And according to the group Public Accountability Initiative, which tracks politicians’ ties to various interests, more than 500 former congressional aides have gone on to become health care lobbyists.

Both lobbyists-turned-aides and aides-turned-lobbyists say they offer unique expertise and experience as lawmakers try to rewrite the nation’s health care laws.

“It gave me a very different perspective, leaving the Hill,” said Debbie Curtis, who spent two years as a lobbyist for the consumer advocacy group Consumer Action during the Clinton-era health care debate. Curtis is currently the chief of staff for Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), the chairman of the powerful health subcommittee on the House Ways and Means Committee.

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This morning Democracy Now! interviewed Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is vowing to withhold support from any health care reform bill lacking a strong public option. Amy Goodman asked Grijalva about the significance of the revolving spinning door between the industry and Senator Baucus’ staff, citing research first published on Eyes on the Ties:

AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Grijalva, I also want to ask you about Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and his close ties to the healthcare industry. Yesterday, the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Baucus had distributed his healthcare plan to lobbyists on K Street prior to sharing the plan with other members of the committee.

Meanwhile, the watchdog website LittleSis.org has revealed Senator Baucus’s chief health adviser, Elizabeth Fowler, is a former executive for the insurance giant Wellpoint. Fowler has been called the “chief operating officer” of the healthcare reform process. Baucus’s previous chief health adviser, Michelle Easton, now lobbies for Wellpoint.

LittleSis.org also reports that another Senate staffer working on Baucus’s healthcare bill, Cathy Koch, is a former lobbyist for health insurance and pharmaceutical interests, including an insurance industry front group. Koch worked as the director of global government affairs at the drug company Amgen until early 2007. Before that, she worked at Ernst & Young, where she lobbied on behalf of a number of large insurance and pharmaceutical companies, including Aetna, Blue Cross, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.

What is your response, considering how central Max Baucus is to determining what Congress will come up with?

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Just when you thought the Baucus revolving door couldn’t spin faster: the Senate staffer responsible for devising the tax policies at the heart of the Baucus plan is a former lobbyist for health insurance and pharmaceutical interests, including an insurance industry front group.

Cathy Koch, who heads the Senate Finance committee’s tax department, was director of global government affairs at pharmaceutical company Amgen until early 2007. Before that, she worked at Ernst and Young, where she lobbied on behalf of a number of large insurance and pharmaceutical companies, including Aetna, Blue Cross, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer.

Tax incentives and calculations are central to health care reform plan that Baucus sent to members of the Gang of Six this weekend, including a penalty on health insurance companies offering expensive plans. The “Cadillac” plan tax has received significant media attention as a particularly important and controversial feature that targets insurance companies.

But was it designed by one of their own?

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LittleSis has gotten two mentions in the UK press recently. First, a BBC News article mentions the possibility that a LittleSis for the UK might get funded by mySociety, a nonprofit that promotes civic tools. They’ve put out a call for proposals about sites to develop in the UK and LittleSis is in the running. The idea for a UK LittleSis will be pitted against other sites and users will vote to see which they think should be developed.

mySociety founder Tom Steinberg says:

“The next step will be on a different scale from what we have built before,” said Mr Steinberg, “something that might have an order of magnitude more impact or more users.”

There is currently no site like LittleSis in the UK. There are certainly plenty of powerful people to connect, so we’re excited about this possible partnership. More to come on how you can help us by voting.

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Over the weekend, the Associated Press broke the news that the drug industry plans to support Obama’s health care proposal. Despite the nasty adjectives the White House has used to describe them in recent months, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) will run TV ads in favor of “Obamacare” that will cost at least $150 million.

The media has done a good job explaining what the two groups have to gain from this unlikely alliance.  The White House needs all the help it can get as conservative groups ramp up opposition and Obama’s poll numbers on health care sink. PhRMA doesn’t want to renegotiate Medicare drug prices. But who are the key players who made this deal happen?  And how are they connected? The LittleSis database gives us a few interesting answers.

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If you’ve turned on the TV this morning you know the networks can’t stop talking about “gold-plated Cadillac plans,” insurance coverage that costs upwards of $10,000 more than the national average.

Senator Kerry has proposed taxing the insurance companies that offer them in order to raise money for universal health coverage. The New York Times reported earlier this week that Kerry’s proposal has thus far received favorable reviews from many congressional leaders, including the wishy-washy Max Baucus.

Yet most other news outlets are telling another story. They have chosen to highlight the detrimental effects of Kerry’s proposal for the middle class and union workers and question it’s ability to raise sufficient funds. Problem is, the stories published by a variety of news outlets (think everyone from FOX News to NPR) all feature the same main characters. And most have ties to health insurance companies.

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A few weeks ago, we set out to build a list of congressional-staffers-turned-health care lobbyists. With the help of some incredible citizen journalists at the Huffington Post Investigative Unit, our list of lobbyists has grown exponentially this week. Here are a few trends we’ve found thus far.

Where they work
Three lobbying firms have acquired a good number of staffers who have worked in congressional offices with close ties to the health care industry. For example, Cassidy & Associates employs former Olympia Snowe staffer Arran Haynes and Mehlman, Vogel & Castagnetti has picked up Chuck Grassley’s former health policy aid Colette Desmarais.  Greenberg Traurig has also acquired a good number of folks who have worked on the Hill.  These firms represent companies including AHIP, Humana and Community Health Systems. Having Hill heavyweights on their staff sure has made these firms attractive picks for the health care industry.

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