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The Midmorning Refill: Big health insurers bankrolling GOP candidates in effort to overturn Obama's health care reform

Today’s Flickr Photo

Bird rescue mission. Flickr photo by USFWS/Southeast.

If you read one thing today . . .

Remember how President Obama thought the best way to health care reform was working hand-in-hand with the health insurance industry? Well, it’s pretty clear now that the insurers were never really that interested in anything except making money. Noam N. Levey in the L.A. Times points out that “the nation’s five largest insurers and the industry’s Washington-based lobbying arm have given three times more money to Republican lawmakers and political action committees than to Democratic politicians and organizations.” Yeah, those same Republicans who have vowed to roll back Obama’s modest (read inadequate) health care plan. As Levey writes:

“The industry would love to have a Republican Congress,” said Wendell Potter, a former executive at Cigna Corp., one of the country’s biggest insurers. “They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington.”

Overheard:

House Minority Leader John Boehner on Fox News talking about his relationship with President Obama:  “I come in and he’ll say ‘Boehner you are almost as dark as me,'” Boehner said. “Listen, we talk about golf. We’ll talk about our skin color. We have a nice relationship. The problem we have is that when we talk to each other, there’s no connection. I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters, my dad owned a bar. I was a small business guy long before I got into this business. When I talk about the real world, it doesn’t seem to register.”