What Will Tom Carper Do to Protect Drug or Insurance Companies This Week?

This is Week 2 of the Finance Committee amending the Chairman’s Mark of the health insurance reform bill, and I wanted to start this week by reminding everyone of Carper’s rather complete abandonment of the voters in Delaware to clearly sit at the table negotiating for and protecting the drug companies and the insurance companies who fund his campaigns. This video was posted in a number of comments last week, but it is worth seeing again:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJa_kTXad1Q[/youtube]

This behavior was brazen enough for even the News Journal to put up a headline that you don’t have to be a blogger to love:

And this headline was attached to an article that explicitly made the link between his defense of the Phrma Deal and his campaign contributions. Carper is not alone here, but Senator Chuck Schumer has the right attitude (for a change):

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) pointed out yesterday that it was perfectly understandable that the drug makers, being publicly traded companies, would fight to preserve their profit margins for the sake of shareholders. But Congress, Schumer added, is bound to different interests. “We don’t represent their stockholders,” he said. “We represent our stockholders — the U.S. taxpayers.”

Carper continued his complete abandonment of Delaware voters by showing up on CNN to advocate for letting the GOP continue to try to gut this effort. And we are supposed to pretend that this is bipartisanship, I guess.

Call Carper’s office this week and remind him that he should not be defending deals with drug companies or insurance companies until he has gotten a good deal for us done first.