Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
State Lawmakers' Op-Eds Provide Glimpse Inside Lobbying Machine Working Against 'Medicare For All'
The Washington Post: State Lawmakers Acknowledge Lobbyists Helped Craft Their Op-Eds Attacking Medicare-For-All
Lobbyists either helped draft or made extensive revisions to opinion columns published by three state lawmakers in a way that suggested Medicare-for-all and other government involvement in health care posed dangers, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post. Montana state Rep. Kathy Kelker (D) and Sen. Jen Gross (D) acknowledged in interviews that editorials they published separately about the single-payer health proposal included language provided by John MacDonald, a lobbyist and consultant in the state who disclosed in private emails that he worked for an unnamed client. (Stein, 12/2)
The Hill: Lobbyists Guided Op-Eds Against 'Medicare For All' By State Lawmakers: Report
The advocacy group Medicare for All Now obtained industry emails detailing messaging against the proposal through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to the Post. The emails show MacDonald apparently excising three paragraphs from Kelker’s piece that concede the U.S. spends more on health care per capita than other developed nations, and also removed a graph depicting the differences in per capita spending between the U.S. and several European nations with universal health care. (Budryk, 12/2)
