Clearing The Air

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Americans enraged by Democratic government (and RWJF lobbied) takeover of our private healthcare system can demonstrate their anger with their wallet

Stop spending money on any and all Johnson & Johnson products Tylenol, Bandaid, Nicoderm, etc. (SC Johnson (cleaning product manufacturer) is not related to the J & J pharmaceutical and medical device conglomerate)

RWJF is the private foundation of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer. In a misguided, rent seeking legislative effort, RWJF has been lobbying for government healthcare in the U.S for over 30 years.

RWJF STRATEGY

For more than 30 years, RWJF has been concerned about Americans' lack of access to affordable and stable health care coverage. RWJF has funded studies, demonstration projects and symposia about this problem.

In 1997, Congress funded the State Children's Health Insurance Program with the aim of providing health insurance coverage to children who were not eligible for private or public insurance programs. That same year, RWJF created Covering Kids® (see Grant Results). In 2001, RWJF reshaped the program and renamed it Covering Kids & Families®, reflecting the Foundation's commitment to help states also cover parents and other adults who work in jobs that do not provide health coverage for them or their children.

Through a series of State Coverage Initiatives, RWJF assisted states in developing and implementing policies that made health care insurance more available and affordable to low-income residents. RWJF also created State Solutions: An Initiative to Improve Enrollment in Medicare Savings Programs, a national program to maximize enrollment in Medicaid, Medicare and other health insurance programs. Communities in Charge: Financing and Delivering Health Care to the Uninsured is a national program to help cities or counties improve access to care for low-income, uninsured individuals by changing the organization and financing of local care delivery (see Grant Results). The Access Project began work to improve health and health care in 1998 (see Grant Results).

RWJF also has supported other efforts to enhance Americans' access to health care coverage, including:

Understanding costs and financing mechanisms through Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (for more information see Grant Results).
Analyzing proposals to expand coverage through the Economic & Social Research Institute's Covering America project.
Helping states plan and develop insurance market reforms to expand health coverage for the uninsured through State Initiatives in Health Care Reform.
Increasing awareness among policy-makers and action by the general public through Cover the Uninsured Week

http://www.esresearch.org/covering_america.php

excerpt:
A major product of the Covering America project was three volumes of comprehensive health coverage proposals that seek to move the country toward universal health coverage.......The proposals were commissioned, reviewed, and assembled by the Economic and Social Research Institute, with a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

The motive of course is to increase market share, placement, and sales of J & J products in a newly mandated government healthcare system which also gives the IRS unprecedented control of every Americans financial information including bank accounts, records, and history. And RWJF president Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, has been a regular White House lobbyist / visitor to the Obama White House throughout the healthcare debate. This modus operandi is nothing new to regular CTA readers, RWJF funded smoking ban lobbyists in an effort to ban tobacco nicotine use, because parent company J & J manufactures and sells Nicoderm, Nicotrol, Nicorette, Commit, etc. A rent seeking ploy which successfully tripled demand for the aforementioned pharmaceutical nicotine products according to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, once government imposed smoking bans were enacted.

So until Obama's new big government healthcare program is ruled unconstitutional or repealed, use your wallet to punish the lobbying groups like RWJF / J & J Company responsible for getting us into this massive new socialist-style, financially unsustainable, government program.

RWJF financial holdings include but not limited to 80,499,208 and 86,853,208 shares of Johnson & Johnson Common Stock in 2003 and 2002, respectively. This information is found on page 8 of 2004 financials for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. At today's Johnson & Johnson price per share 67.36, that's just a shade over $5.4 billion dollars.
Update: Obama's new socialist healthcare bill seems to also be a flimsy excuse to increase taxes on everything and anything, related or not. A new 10% tax on indoor tanning salons starts today.