← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Career-Destroying Conflict of Interest: It’s Not Just for Med School Professors.

… Republicans had also signaled that they would grill Daschle on conflict-of-interest issues, noting that the president’s choice to lead a healthcare overhaul had accepted more than $5 million in speaking and consulting fees from the healthcare industry in the past two years.

From Talking Points Memo:

Daschle’s coziness with corporate interests, many of whom will have key business before Congress and the Obama administration, could complicate the larger task of reducing the influence of the private sector in Washington.

… [T]here’s nothing explicitly nefarious about Daschle’s work on behalf of health insurers. But interests like AHIP and UnitedHealth have, by and large, stood in the way of efforts to remove our healthcare system from the grip of private interests, which many see as a prerequisite for real reform. Of course, that likely won’t happen without at least neutralizing the opposition of the private insurers — so perhaps Daschle’s ties to those insurers make him ideally suited for the role. But at the very least, it would be nice to know what kind of “policy advice” he gave his corporate clients.

Margaret Soltan, February 4, 2009 7:55AM
Posted in: conflict of interest

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=8873

3 Responses to “Career-Destroying Conflict of Interest: It’s Not Just for Med School Professors.”

  1. theprofessor Says:

    Don’t kick a limousine liberal when he’s down, UD.

    Besides, he still has peeps at the IRS, and thanks to your blog, THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    I’m married to a European, tp. He thinks Americans pay far too little in taxes.

    If anything, we overpay. Can you get in trouble for overpaying?

  3. theprofessor Says:

    Oh, indeed you can, UD. I was once sent a peremptory demand to pay an extra $750 with basically no reason provided except, "we say so." After spending countless hours on hold and speaking with several clueless agents, it emerged that they were trying to charge me payroll tax on non-wage income(clearly documented as such), which as a dumb and honest Midwestern hick I had dutifully reported. One agent let it slip that this was suspicious in itself, since academic types rarely reported such income.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories