Originally posted Thu, 08/06/2009 - 03:34, bumping back to the top as it is worthy of additional attention during this period of debate over national healthcare reform - standingup

This is the first installment of a collaboration between deltadoc and TheFatLadySings. Articles will be alternately published under each moniker.

In 1999, speaking to physicians, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, a Reagan appointee, decried the hold of Big Tobacco on health care legislation.

He called tobacco “the sleaziest, slimiest, most devious industry in the world,” whose members “also are the smartest and the richest," and then added. "...that’s a bad combination.”*

Koop remarked:

The biggest scandal in Washington was the Republican Senate selling out to the tobacco industry.

Always prescient, Koop was drawing attention to a coup d'etat: a bloodless takeover of government by big business...one that would drastically effect us for over a decade and is still derailing healthcare reform efforts today.

Koop warned, "We have lost control of medicine to the business world."

From GreatFallsTribune.com comes word that the US Chamber of Commerce thinks Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) deserves their Spirit of Enterprise Award, once again, for voting the Chamber's way at least 70 percent of the time.