The campaign money chase allows pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, and other big-money special interests extraordinary access to lawmakers. It gives vested interests influence to shape public policies that directly affect the lives of America's seniors. Here is how:

Social Security: - Wall Street firms are pushing hard for privatization of the Social Security system. Wall Street is a master of the most popular political investments in Washington today's special-interest PAC contributions to politicians and huge soft money donations to the political parties. A Common Cause analysis shows the securities industry invested $12 million in PAC contributions to candidates and $19 million in soft money contributions through the political parties during the past decade.

Leading the industry in PAC donations during the decade was Merrill Lynch & Co, whose total PAC and soft money donations topped $2 million, according to Common Cause.

Medicare Cuts: Republican congressional leaders and President Clinton want to cut Medicare $115 billion by 2002. How will these cuts and revisions to the Medicare system end up affecting recipients? The devil will be in the details worked out in the coming months. Washington's big money special interests know this. And they know that the access and influence their political contributions buy provides a key advantage during this complex process.

Two interests with the most to gain or lose in Medicare revisions, health insurers and doctors, are also "preferred providers" of campaign cash to politicians. The health insurance industry gave more than $25 million in PAC and soft money during the decade 1985 through 1995, according to Common Cause. Doctors, and their association PACs, including AMA PAC, gave more than $23 million during the period.

Higher Drug Prices: When patents expire on prescription drugs, the generic drug makers get a chance to market them, at substantially lower costs to the consumer. But big brand-name drug companies lobby hard in Washington and give hefty campaign contributions to prevent those patents from running out. The result? Millions more in profits for the brand-name companies for each year they hold on to their patents, and billions in higher drug prices for the rest of us.

G.D. Searle & Co, and its parent company Monsanto, which got a patent extension on its Daypro anti-inflammatory drug last year, gave $114,000 in PAC money to candidates and $129,000 in soft money to the parties during the last Congress, according to Common Cause. Glaxo Wellcome gave $925,000 in PAC and soft money during the session, including a $100,000 soft money donation=20 to the RNC the day after the company won a key patent extension vote on its Zantac ulcer drug. The company stands to gain $2 billion by maintaining the higher drug prices.

Overall, drug companies gave nearly $25 million in PAC and soft money during the past decade, according to Common Cause.

Nursing Home Standards: Industry lobbyists that made substantial campaign contributions to the Democratic party received access to key policy makers in the Health Care Finance Administration last year. According to Time magazine, Alan Solomont, a nursing home executive, "gave the Democrats $160,000 and helped raise $1.1 million more from nursing-home owners." The result? A change in policy that eases up on state and federal regulation of nursing homes. Guidelines were issued in January 1997 that eased fines against nursing homes for non life-threatening violations of the rules, like poor nutrition and lack of privacy, that consumer advocates say account for the vast majority of offenses affecting nursing home life.

The nursing home industry as a whole gave nearly $3.4 million in soft money to both parties in the past decade, led by $1 million in soft money from Integrated Health Services, according to a Common Cause analysis.

Health Insurance Rip-Offs: "Dread disease" insurance policies promise to pay if the buyer suffers cancer or another specific illness. The problem is, according to a recent Business Week article, most of the buyers are already covered by Medicare and Medigap. Congress once banned selling duplicative policies to Medicare recipients, but, in 1994 and again last year, lawmakers weakened these protections.

These are some of the examples of how campaigns are affected by the lobbying of big interests. There is simply too much at stake for major companies to not lobby the politicians. The politicians need the money because they have to outspend their opponent. We can stop all of this by changing the current rules. Then the cycle that went out of control last election will not happen agian.

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