Hypocrisy on the Public Option

From The Street.com:

Evan Bayh, the junior senator from Indiana, is in the middle of a heated debate in the Senate on whether a public option should be included as part of President Obama's health care reforms. An organizer of a group of so-called Senate Blue Dog Democrats, to date, Bayh's been a staunch opponent of any changes to the status quo in this debate.

Bayh is at best naive and disingenuous, and at worst supremely hypocritical in pushing his views as those of his voters.

His wife, Susan Bayh, sits on the board of WellPoint HealthCare in her hometown of Indianapolis. Over the last six years, Susan Bayh has received at least $2 million in compensation from WellPoint alone for serving on its board.

Evan Bayh, Susan Bayh and WellPoint seem to share almost identical views on health care and the current public option debate. Bayh recently refused to commit to voting for cloture on a bill with a public option saying: "It's not fair to ask people to facilitate the enactment of policies with which we ultimately disagree."

WellPoint spent $2.6 million in campaign contributions in 2008 for Democrat and Republican candidates. (Evan Bayh himself received more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from the health care industry in 2008.)

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10618234/4/evan-bayh-hypocrisy-on-the-public-option.html