Health Care Insurers Spent $100 Million To Defeat Obamacare

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/06/13/499093/health-care-insurers-spent-100-million-to-combat-the-affordable-care-act/

By Annie-Rose Strasser posted from ThinkProgress Health on Jun 13, 2012

As the Supreme Court readies to announce their decision on the individual mandate portion of the health reform, it has emerged that the largest health care lobbying group in the country spent a total of $102.4 million in just 15 months to prevent Obamacare from becoming law in the first place.

In 2009 alone, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) pumped $86.2 million into a conservative lobbying group, the US Chamber of Commerce, to combat President Obama’s health care reform plan. But with the added months of 2010 prior to the ACA’s March passage, AHIP piled on an additional $16 million to be used against the bill.

That staggering total, which the National Journal’s Influence Alley uncovered today, was not out in the open — rather, the funds were transferred through a secretive process and listed only by the organization as ‘advocacy’ spending:

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