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If lawmakers thought the Gift Act, passed last year, would put a crimp on the the free meals and parties they've come to expect during a session, they thought wrong.
My story on the latest round of lobbyist reports (meaning the reports that have come in since last time I'd checked a couple of weeks ago) can be found HERE.
My favorite item was the health-care company lobbyist who spent $3,000 on Santa Fe Baking Company cookies he had delivered to the Legislature. Shouldn't health-care companies be distributing fruits and vegetables instead?
I also did a sidebar on Santa Fe local government lobbyists HERE.
And here's the story I did based on lobbyist reports a couple of weeks ago. CLICK HERE.
My story on the latest round of lobbyist reports (meaning the reports that have come in since last time I'd checked a couple of weeks ago) can be found HERE.
My favorite item was the health-care company lobbyist who spent $3,000 on Santa Fe Baking Company cookies he had delivered to the Legislature. Shouldn't health-care companies be distributing fruits and vegetables instead?
I also did a sidebar on Santa Fe local government lobbyists HERE.
And here's the story I did based on lobbyist reports a couple of weeks ago. CLICK HERE.
Comments
"My favorite item was the health-care company lobbyist who spent $3,000 on Santa Fe Baking Company cookies he had delivered to the Legislature. Shouldn't health-care companies be distributing fruits and vegetables instead?"
Yes, if the lobbyist was in fact working for a health-care company.
I suspect (s)he was working for a Medical Services delivery company instead, and as such, distributing cookies, rather than fruits and vegetables, does more to cause illness, and sell Medical Products, than would distributing fruits and vegetables.
The former benefits from illness, and is adverse to early intervention and a healthy population, while the latter benefits from a sick population, and then touting all the wonderful expensive products that then can be sold, and used as "evidence" to how great a private medical services delivery system is.
As long as the general public is fooled into thinking whether a good is private or social is something that politicians get to decide, rather than determined by the nature of the good itself, the public will continue to waste effort on medical products rather than health. (see,e.g., footnote 1and 2, page 1 in 2007 'Nobel' Prize in Economics- public info) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/econ
Once we change the focus from inputs (fancy medical products) to outputs (a healthy population) we will recognize that health is a social good, and the effort to privatize basic benefits is as silly as attempting to legislate the temperature at which water should freeze would be.
And we'll get a healthy population at the fraction of the cost we are currently paying for a healthy medical products and insurance industry.