After Calling Health Insurance Companies “Villains”, Pelosi Decides She’ll Keep Their Money
Yesterday Nancy Pelosi announced that private insurance companies were “villains” and “immoral” because they wouldn’t get behind her plans for a government take-over of the health care industry. Today comes news that Speaker Pelosi will be keeping the campaign contributions made by said villainous and immoral companies.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called health insurers “the villains” in the unfolding story of the health care overhaul on Thursday, ratcheting up an anti-insurer theme trotted out by President Obama earlier this month and encouraged by other Democratic leaders in Congress.
“It is somewhat immoral what they are doing. Of course, they have been immoral all along how they have treated the people that they insure,” MSNBC’s Luke Russert quoted her as saying. “They are the villains in this.”
Pelosi, of course, has accepted campaign contributions from said villains this year and in the past, as have most of her Democratic colleagues. Pelosi’s campaign committee, for example, took $2,500 from AFLAC’s political action committee on April 13. But she’s not giving the money back just because she thinks the sources are immoral and villainous.
“As the Speaker’s opposition to the health insurance companies being in charge of American’s health care shows, there is no link between political contributions and positions on policy,” said her spokesman Brendan Daly.
Besides, a quick look at her records suggests that health insurers make up a fraction of the money she accepts from the broader insurance industry and place her fairly low on the list of recipients—particularly given her longtime spot atop the Democratic Party—according to a study released earlier this year by the Center for Responsive Politics.
I guess Speaker Nancy Pants doesn’t mind taking money from villains.
