David A. Patten of Newsmax.com quotes IWV’s Heather Higgins:
There have been growing reports of healthcare-industry lobbyists pouring money into GOP coffers, presumably to hold their place in line when it comes to manipulating any legislative reforms sought in the new Congress.
"It would be understandable, if the Republicans seem to be coming into a new majority, that there would be vested interests that want them to not touch pieces of [the Obamacare] legislation," Heather Richardson Higgins, president and CEO of Independent Women's Voice, tells Newsmax.
"For example the insurance companies, which hated the public option, [and] loved the idea of an individual mandate. So maybe they have a vested interest," she says. "And we all know that pharma was very much on the side of trying to get this legislation passed."
Higgins and other opponents of President Obama's healthcare legislation want to lock in commitments before the election.
They know it will be difficult enough to stop the implementation of the legislation while Obama is in office — especially with some lobbyists probably fighting the repeal effort every step of the way.
"If all one does is vote to repeal it, that will be vetoed," Higgins tells Newsmax. "And then in effect the law will continue to be implemented, with all the harms that it potentially entails . . . whether you're talking about 1099s for businesses, the elimination and severe restrictions on health savings accounts, the implementation of the individual mandates, the 16,000 new IRS agents — it goes on and on."
The purpose of the pledge, Higgins says, is to ensure that the opposition to ObamaCare is more than just symbolic.