 From left, Chairman Max Baucus and Liz Fowler, Baucus’ chief health counsel, wait for Senator Chuck Grassley and Mark Hayes, chief health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee Republican staff, to finish their conversation before speaking with them during the Senate Finance Committee’s markup of “The America’s Health Future Act” in 2009. (Roll Call/Getty Images/Bill Clark) |
Elizabeth Fowler, a Capitol Hill aide who President Obama chose to oversee the implementation of his health care act, is widely credited as being one of the key architects of Obamacare. As chief health policy counsel to Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), she drafted the bill. Now, Fowler has left Capitol Hill for a senior-level position dealing with “global health policy” at Johnson & Johnson’s government affairs and policy group. The private sector is not new to Fowler; as Bill Moyers reported in 2009, before going to work for Baucus, Fowler was a vice president at WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurer. The Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald writes, “Whatever one’s views on Obamacare were and are: The bill’s mandate that everyone purchase the products of the private health insurance industry, unaccompanied by any public alternative, was a huge gift to that industry.” |
