Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 21, 1994 TAG: 9402210121
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, raised more than $270,000 in the last six months of 1993. Not a single individual contribution he listed came from his home state of Illinois.
Rep. Jim Cooper, the Tennessee Democrat who is sponsoring the business-backed rival to President Clinton's health care plan, raised more money last year from health interests alone than he spent to win re-election in 1992. This year, he's seeking a Senate seat.
Of the health care money that came to Cooper in the last half of 1993, 60 percent was from outside Tennessee.
Campaign finances are a key indicator of the pressures Congress faces as it writes new laws, and no force was more evident last year than the health care lobby.
Insurance companies, some of whom feel threatened by the Clinton plan, gave at least $37,000 to the sponsor of another health care reform bill, Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I.
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, pulled in at least $134,000 in the last half of 1993 from political action committees representing hospitals, drug companies, doctors, insurers and others with a financial stake in health care reform. Moynihan's panel will have a major say in the shape of health reform legislation.
"The medical industry has an enormous investment in the U.S. Congress," said Fred Wertheimer, director of Common Cause, which lobbies for changes in the way campaigns are paid for.
For years, political money from health interests has prevented reform of the health care system, Wertheimer said. Now that it seems inevitable, "the battle going on among these interest groups is who are going to be the winners and losers in any new system."
The campaign treasuries also provide a window into the tactics of everyday lobbying on Capitol Hill.
For instance, seven executives of pharmaceutical maker American Home Products each gave $500 to $1,000 - a total of $4,000 - to Rostenkowski on July 2, 1993, the same day the company's PAC chipped in another $1,000. Such "bundling" of contributions is done to catch the eye of a lawmaker.
In the case of American Home Products, the concern is trying to persuade Congress not to impose price controls on prescription drugs, company spokesman Lou Cafiero said. Campaign giving is part of a broader strategy that includes advertisements and generating letters and phone calls from the firm's 22,000 American workers, he said.
Cooper, who accepts no PAC money, got much of the $1.6 million he collected last year from Washington insiders and health care industry officials.
In the second half of the year, more than one-third of Cooper's money came from health care interests, and 62 percent of the health contributions came from outside Tennessee, according to an analysis by Citizen Action, a group that is promoting the rival "single-payer" approach to health reform.
At the Hospital Corporation of America, a major chain of for-profit hospitals, 21 executives gave Cooper nearly $19,000; 21 officials at Pacificare, a West Coast health maintenance organization, gave $13,500; and 30 officers at Healthtrust, another hospital company, gave $23,500.
Cooper's bill "will benefit the very interests from whom he receives so much money," said Michael Podhorzer, who studied Cooper's campaign finances for the consumer group.
A Cooper aide said the Senate race could cost $4 million. Overall, out-of-state gifts are less than 27 percent of his total, she said.
Besides, the aide said, Cooper first proposed his bill in spring 1992, well before he knew he would be running for the Senate.
Chafee also did well with an array of health interests. In addition to the insurance sector's support, he got major contributions from doctors and drug companies.
Money flowed, as well, to chairmen of key congressional committees that will write most of the health legislation.
Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, pulled in $324,000 last year, much of it from Washington-based lobbyists and interest groups involved in the health-care debate.
by CNB