How bad is Obamacare? It took 4,525 lobbyists and $1.2 billion to buy its enactment

About 1,750 businesses and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists, total — eight for each member of Congress — and spent at least $1.2 billion to influence health care bills and other issues, according to a Center analysis of disclosure documents that included “health reform” or similar wording. The exact dollar amount spent on health care reform remains unclear because lobbyists are not required to itemize how much money in a given contract is devoted to a specific area. But if only 10 percent of that lobby spending went toward health reform, the amount would total $120 million — and that’s likely a record for a single year’s spending on a particular issue, experts say.

From former congressional aides to former agency heads, the firms unleashed well-connected lobbyists to push their clients’ agendas, including Thomas Scully, a former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush, and Colette Desmarais, a former top health policy aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. Scully is now a lobbyist with Alston & Bird LLP and Desmarais works for Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti Inc.

The tremendous financial boost that health reform brought to lobby firms in 2009 was greater than even veteran observers expected. “I think it is unprecedented,” Washington lawyer and lobbying expert Ken Gross said about the amount of money spent on the health reform battle. The length of the debate, paired with the more than 1,750 business and organizations that signed up to lobby on health reform bills, likely made it the strongest and most expensive lobby push ever, he said.

“First of all, it went on for so long,” Gross said. “Second of all, it was high-stakes poker. It stands to reason that it would be a record-breaker.”