Beth Capell, Ph.D. responds on the AAHP/HIAA merger and the importance
of lobbying:
The budgets listed (in yesterday’s message on the AAHP/HIAA merger) probably do NOT include campaign contributions as your comment implies.Instead, these budgets are devoted to lobbying, providing information and “research” that supports lobbying, and activating grassroots presence (though perhaps not that either: it would depend on how these associations structure what they do: the overhead on grassroots could be modest and most of the cost of that effort could be buried within the budgets of individual companies).
Woody Allen says that 90% of life is just showing up. The same is true for moving an idea through the political process. Showing up counts. A lot. The insurers are ubiquitous on health issues–not just universal coverage, but Medicare prescription drugs and probably a dozen other key issues. And they are omnipresent: that’s what $30-$40 million in lobbying presence means: it means that every member of Congress who thinks a thought about health care knows who the insurance lobbyists are and probably what they will think about an issue.
PNHP has a plan for affordable health care for all—but members of Congress won’t know about it or take it seriously without an effective lobbying presence and without grassroots capacity to back that up. An occasional appearance on public television or an article in a medical journal (not widely read on Capitol Hill) are good but not sufficient. It is not a matter of matching the insurance industry dollar for dollar: after all, we beat them on HMO reform in California with far less capacity than that–but we (you, me, lots of other people and a number of key organizations) were there day after day for five years to win that fight. A fight at the national level requires commensurately greater capacity.
Good ideas are important but not sufficient. Just showing up counts for a lot in advocacy. Creating that presence, that showing up is what organizing is about.
Beth Capell, Ph.D., political science, lobbyist for California Physicians Alliance, Health Access California and others.