Tracking The Money In The Health Care Debate

Millions of dollars are pouring into Capitol Hill this summer, as lobbyists jockey to have their clients' interests represented in three major pieces of legislation just beginning to take shape. The objects of the lobbyists' attention: massive bills on health care, banking regulation and energy.


In "Dollar Politics," a multipart, multimedia series beginning this week, NPR examines this extraordinary intersection between money and politics and what it could mean for public policy.

Two NPR correspondents attended the first legislative action on health care reform: a meeting of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. We also sent a photographer to take pictures — not of the senators, but of the audience, the people watching the committee meeting, many of them lobbyists.

These days, just about every interest has a lobbyist. Drug manufacturers, hospitals, doctors, pharmacists, marriage counselors, chiropractors, unions; they all have people working the Hill for them. And that's just a fraction of the groups. After all, the health care industry now represents one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

Read more at NPR