I can't answer the stock question (yet) but if you check out this link:
http://www.opensecrets.org/navasp/whosgetting_response.asp
it can tell you where his PAC funding has come from since 1994. Also below is a little history on Mr. Bill!
For those who want to pass this around far and wide!!
Deborah
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Frist Aid
This senator handles his family company's legislative prescriptions.
by Robert Dreyfuss
Some companies hire lobbyists to work Congress. Some have their executives lobby directly. But Tennessee's Frist family, the founders of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest hospital conglomerate, has taken it a step further: They sent an heir to the Senate. And there, with disturbingly little controversy, Republican Sen. Bill Frist has co-sponsored bills that may allow his family's company to profit from the ongoing privatization of Medicare.
The senator's father, Dr. Thomas Frist Sr., was a founder of Columbia/HCA, the country's biggest chain of for-profit hospitals, a $20 billion health care empire that includes 340 hospitals, 135 outpatient surgery centers, and 200 home health care agencies in 38 states. The family has spent lavishly on political campaigns for years. Patricia C. Frist -- wife of Bill's brother, Columbia/HCA vice chairman Tommy Frist Jr. -- won herself a place on this year's Mother Jones 400 list (see #326) by giving $100,000 in soft money to the Republican National Committee. Add in PAC and coordinated executive donations, and the company's largesse comes to more than $360,000 just for 1995-96 -- not including campaign contributions from other family members.
But the Frists' ace in the hole is Bill, whose finances depend directly on Columbia/HCA's success. In 1994 Sen. Frist disclosed that his personal fortune of $20 million included more than $13 million in Columbia/HCA stock.
Frist is an outspoken advocate for giving Medicare recipients more "options" -- options that could direct billions of Medicare dollars to Columbia/HCA. In January, Frist, along with Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), introduced a bill that would for the first time allow hospitals and doctors to join together as private entities that could contract with Medicare. That would enable these so-called provider-sponsored organizations (PSOs) to compete directly with HMOs for Medicare patients. Not surprisingly, Columbia/HCA stands to make a tidy profit from the new business.
Frist also opposes a White House plan that would save Medicare $6 billion by reducing payments to HMOs and, if approved, PSOs as well. According to various recent studies, the government is overpaying HMOs for Medicare patients by at least 5 to 7 percent. But even though he acknowledges that HMOs are being overpaid, Frist argues, "That might be a good thing. It will attract more managed care companies into the market and drive prices down."
Frist is not troubled by his apparent conflict of interest. "Everybody knows my background, where I come from, and the hats that I wear," he says. "Sure it could become an issue. Some may want to make it an issue." But Frist adds, "There is a stone wall that comes between any [PAC] money that I get or interests that I have, and what I do here."
Over the past several years, Columbia/ HCA has swooped in and purchased scores of hospitals in states from Florida to California. According to a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article, what follows when Columbia/HCA takes over is less charity care, the replacement of senior health professionals with less experienced (and less expensive) workers, and the risk of lower quality service as profit supersedes care. In late March, federal investigators from the FBI, IRS, and Department of Health and Human Services seized files from several Columbia/HCA facilities in El Paso, Texas. As Mother Jones went to press, the government had not yet announced the scope and purpose of the investigation. According to the Houston Chronicle, investigators were looking for evidence that doctors were being paid to refer patients to Columbia/HCA facilities.
http://www.motherjones.com/coinop_congress/97mojo_400/especially.html
Money is part of what is driving Frist, though he is not taking a salary. The Frist family is Columbia's largest noninstitutional shareholder, with 25 million shares. Over the past year or so, the value of this 4% stake has declined from $1.1 billion to about $700 million.
FAMILY BIZ.
Equally important, Frist wants to wipe the tarnish of scandal from his family name. Columbia/HCA's misadventures have deeply embarrassed a proud, overachieving clan. Its 86-year-old patriarch, Dr. Thomas F. Frist Sr., is famed in Tennessee for having served as personal physician to five successive governors. Tommy Jr. is the eldest of three brothers, each of whom played quarterback for Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville and became doctors like Dad. Robert, a cardiac surgeon, is the only Frist still practicing. Tommy gave up medicine 30 years ago when he left the Air Force and joined with his father in 1968 to found HCA, the first investor-owned hospital chain. William, the youngest, was a heart-lung transplant surgeon until 1994, when he won election to the U.S. Senate
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products:
Top 2 Senators
Election cycle: 2000
List Top 20: All Recipients Presidential Candidates -- Senators
Rank
Candidate Amount
1. Hatch, Orrin G (R-UT) $399,874
2. Frist, Bill (R-TN) $116,457
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=H04&Cycle=2000&recipdet
ail=S&Mem=Y&sortorder=U
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BILL FRIST (R-TN)
Top Industries
The top industries supporting Bill Frist are:
1 Health Professionals $594,684
2 Securities & Investment $265,580
3 Lawyers/Law Firms $204,277
4 Pharmaceuticals/Health Products $201,723
5 Hospitals/Nursing Homes $184,700
6 Retired $181,935
7 Commercial Banks $173,200
8 Real Estate $173,050
9 Insurance $166,170
10 General Contractors $146,650
11 Air Transport $134,625
12 Misc Finance $121,950
13 Education $106,800
14 Automotive $102,350
15 Misc Manufacturing & Distributing $100,750
16 Lobbyists $86,176
17 Oil & Gas $83,950
18 TV/Movies/Music $79,650
19 Food & Beverage $73,470
20 Misc Business $71,250
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?CID=N00003147&cycle=2002
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Pharmaceuticals/Health Products:
Top Contributors
Election cycle: 2002
Total contributed: $9,205,689
Contributions from individuals: $694,499
Contributions from PACs: $2,349,503
Soft money contributions: $6,161,687
RankOrganization Amount Dems Repubs
1 Bristol-Myers Squibb $1,033,535 10% 89%
2 Pfizer Inc $907,332 13% 87%
3 American Home Products $573,380 16% 84%
4 Pharmacia Corp $563,266 20% 80%
5 Pharmaceutical Rsrch & Mfr $519,287 13% 87%
6 GlaxoSmithKline $481,847 18% 82%
7 Eli Lilly & Co $480,061 28% 72%
8 Schering-Plough Corp $454,650 25% 75%
9 Amgen Inc $410,551 19% 81%
10 Metabolife International $369,500 55% 45%
11 Johnson & Johnson $335,547 32% 67%
12 Aventis $272,054 36% 64%
13 Novartis Corp $257,622 40% 60%
14 Merck & Co $244,099 24% 76%
15 Abbott Laboratories $219,640 7% 93%
16 Barr Laboratories $164,666 8% 92%
17 Baxter International $137,600 11% 89%
18 Advanced Medical Tech. $103,598 48% 52%
19 Bayer Corp $103,500 23% 77%
20 Cardinal Health $85,300 35% 65%
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.asp?Ind=H04
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Pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed unprecedented increases in profits over the last ten years, with drugs like Viagra and Prozac becoming household names. And, as profits went up, so did the industry's campaign
contributions. The pharmaceutical and health products companies industry, which includes not only drug manufacturers, but also dealers of medical products, and nutritional and dietary supplements, is consistently one of the top 20 industries for campaign contributions. The industry now gives eight times what it did in 1990.
The pharmaceutical industry has a special reason to be generous right now. Congress is considering several different proposals to include a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. Any government-subsidized drug
benefit would invariably come with price controls, cutting into the profits of drug companies. Sens. John Breaux (D-La.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) have already reintroduced their proposals from last year, which not only gives prescription drug coverage to seniors, but protects the beneficiaries from cost increases. President Bush has proposed simply giving states block
grants to help cover the cost of the drugs, a plan supported by drugmakers.
But the GOP clearly prefers the Breaux-Frist plan, despite the fact that the pharmaceutical industry overwhelmingly supports Republican candidates.
Republicans received nearly 70 percent of the industry's total contributions in the 2000 election cycle. Whether or not prescription drug coverage can
even be added to Medicare depends on whether there's money in the federal budget to pay for it. And the man in charge of budgeting the money for the benefit - and determining if there's a need for price controls - is Mitch Daniels, Bush's director of the office of management and budget. Daniels is a former executive at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
The pharmaceutical industry also has to deal with a new lobbying presence on Capitol Hill this year. The Generic Pharmaceutical Association, recently formed by the merger of several smaller associations, is going to push for greater consumer access to generic drugs as one way of making prescription drugs more affordable. The group's timing couldn't be better. Patents on several profitable brand name drugs, like Prozac, are set to expire soon.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/background.asp?Ind=H04
Be At Peace,
Deborah Delp
Mommy to Samantha (NT) and Jr (ASD)
"What we do with our lives depends on our
motivation to do something with our lives."
D.A.Delp
"The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is
Between a Parent and Child"
Homepage:
http://the_delps.tripod.com/
Moderator of:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/autism_and_vaccinations
Community Zero Moderator of:
http://www2.communityzero.com/Autism_Vaccinations
