[Too cozy with the hospital lobby and pharmaceutical industry, the
Massachusetts congressman has failed constituents during the COVID
crisis.] [[link removed]]

WHY RICHARD NEAL’S SEAT IS NO LONGER SAFE  
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Daniel Boguslaw
June 9, 2020
The American Prospect
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_ Too cozy with the hospital lobby and pharmaceutical industry, the
Massachusetts congressman has failed constituents during the COVID
crisis. _

Rep. Richard Neal puts his mask back on after speaking at a signing
ceremony for the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care
Enhancement Act, April 23, 2020., Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

 

Richard Neal, the U.S. Representative from Massachusetts’s First
District, has long been one of the most powerful representatives in
Congress while remaining one of its most invisible. But after
Democrats took back the House, Neal became chair of the influential
Ways and Means Committee in 2019 thanks mainly to seniority.

He explains his decades-long tenure in the House as a product of his
fight for the constituents of the first district: He poses next to his
recycling center
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on Earth Day and cuts ribbons
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when he’s not wooing donors in one of the private lodge boxes
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he rents at sporting events. Until now, Neal has held a safe seat.

At the beginning of May, Neal congratulated himself on his efforts to
aid families “feeling the pain of a terrible one-two punch—a
national public-health emergency coupled with a historic economic
downturn.” He proclaimed, “The gravity of our new reality demands
substantial solutions.” But Neal’s coziness with corporate lobbies
has led him to side with powerful industries at the expense of the
citizens of his district, and constituents are starting to take
notice.

This year, Neal has collected more PAC donations
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than all but one member of Congress, with top donations coming from
the hospital lobby, private equity, and capital-management PACs, all
of which have crippled hospitals in Neal’s district while providing
their CEOs with millions in executive compensation. Neal has further
immiserated his already impoverished district by striking down
progressive policies like free tax filing and surprise-billing reform
while failing to advance any legislative legacy of his own.

Last April, Neal gained unwanted national attention for slow walking
demands for Trump’s taxes. Investigative reporting by _Prospect_
executive editor David Dayen revealed that
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Neal’s delay was connected to his efforts to gain support for a bill
called the SECURE Act. The act allowed annuities access to 401(k)
accounts, a key goal of many of Neal’s largest contributors in the
insurance industry. Neal waited until April 3, a day after the bill
had been safely reported out of committee with Republican support, to
finally demand Trump’s taxes.

Driving through the worst hit parts of western Mass during COVID,
it’s hard not to feel like Richard Neal’s legacy is anything other
than a beckoning toward end times.

If there is a grassroots challenger best poised to reverse the damage
done by one of corporate Democrats’ longest tenured champions, it is
Alex Morse. The four-term mayor of Holyoke grew up in public housing,
lost a brother to the opioid epidemic, and was reared by a father who
still works in a meatpacking in Springfield. At the ripe age of 22,
Morse campaigned for—and won—the Holyoke mayorship while finishing
his senior year at Brown. With COVID-19 as the catalyst, the now
31-year-old mayor could very well win an upset victory, propelled to a
seat in the House as Neal succumbs to a death by a thousand
self-inflicted wounds.

IN 2019, NEAL drew criticism for axing a critical expansion of
Democrats’ drug-pricing bill. As _The Intercept_ then reported, Neal
sabotaged the amendment
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that would have both broadened the number of drugs that could be price
negotiated and extended negotiated prices to the uninsured. For Neal,
the veto was a no-brainer: Since 2007 he’s received more than
$500,000 [[link removed]] from the pharmaceutical
industry and become one of the most outspoken
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opponents
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Medicare for All. But unlike Neal, thousands of Massachusetts
residents are being forced to choose between rationing their life
saving medications and putting food on the table as the number of
unemployment claims in Massachusetts approaches one million
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With some estimates predicting up to five more years of coronavirus
circulation
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an amended drug-pricing bill could have saved Americans millions on
expensive life-saving drugs in an economy rapidly headed toward
depression. Thanks to Neal, that’s no longer on the table.

Neal furthered his war on the people of Massachusetts in February when
he sided with private equity giant Blackstone
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and the hospital lobby (both of which have donated significant sums to
his war chest) in killing a bill that would have prevented hospitals
from slamming patients with surprise bills far exceeding in-network
costs.

With a rapid influx of hospital patients seeking treatment for
COVID-19, the uninsured are also the least protected
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from surprise billing costs from out of network services like the
pulmonologist or cardiac specialist referrals increasingly common in
the treatment of the coronavirus. Imagine losing your job, then losing
your health insurance, then getting COVID-19, going to the doctor, and
receiving a bill for thousands of dollars in unexpected medical fees.
This is Neal’s legacy.

Meanwhile, Neil benefits directly from these hospitals’ windfalls.
CEOs like Mark Keroack of Baystate Health have donated thousands to
the hospital lobby which is also a major backer of Neal . Public
records show that Keroack donated $4,500 to Neal directly
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another $3,000 to the American Hospital Association
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turn has donated $7,000
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to his campaign. From just doctors groups and hospital associations,
Neal has raised well over $200,000 in the past two election cycles.
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But as one hand washes the other at the executive level, nurses I
spoke with throughout western Massachusetts report layoffs,
intimidation, lack of PPE, and unsafe working conditions, including
being forced to work between COVID wards and general hospital
populations without adequate time or supplies to safely disinfect.

It’s not only Neal’s pre-COVID failures that have worsened the
crisis in the Bay State; it’s also his failures to pass protective
legislation in the past three months.

This is all taking place in hospitals that have received tens of
millions in federal aid under the CARES act, and whose executives are
also raking in seven figures: In 2016, Keroack took home well over $2
million in executive compensation
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As nurses die from COVID exposure and patients succumb to the virus in
climbing numbers due to layoffs and PPE shortages, hospital executives
continue to claim massive bonuses, parts of which are recycled into
Neal’s overflowing coffers.

Despite reports of mismanagement and negligence, hospital CEOs and VPs
likely won’t face financial or legal reprimand for undermining their
staff and the health and safety of their patients. Republican Gov.
Charlie Baker has copied Andrew Coumo’s legislation
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for word to shield executives from liability for COVID-related deaths.
This type of corporate immunity has also been championed by Mitch Mc
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as his sole priority for the next round of COVID relief negotiations.

Neal also made headlines for one of the most ingenious bait-and-switch
policies of the last 10 years: killing the free tax-filing program
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under the guise of inventing it. While Neal cast himself as a hero for
passing legislation ordering large firms to offer free tax-filing
services, what his legislation actually did was ban the IRS from
offering the free service. Instead, Neal handed the keys from a public
agency to a handful of corporations whose free filing systems are
designed to make it next to impossible to actually file for free. Neal
got kickbacks from the very companies he handed free filing over to:
$16,000 from Intuit and H&R Block
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The repercussions of this decision go beyond the fact that filers are
now forced to pay exorbitant fees to file as corporations are loosed
to gorge on their returns. In light of COVID-19, it also means that
they have to pay to get their stimulus checks: The fastest way to get
a check is by filing for 2019, but to do that, you have to go through
Turbo Tax or H&R Block, and that means you almost certainly have to
pay. It’s a textbook extortion racket, and for Richard Neal, it’s
paid out nicely.

It’s not only Neal’s pre-COVID failures that have worsened the
crisis in the Bay State; it’s also his failures to pass protective
legislation in the past three months. Instead of backing the
progressive Paycheck Guarantee Act, which would have subsidized
payrolls with direct grants (a strategy advocated by Neal’s
challenger Alex Morse and House progressive caucus co-chair Pramila
Jayapal),Neal supports the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC),
cutting businesses huge tax breaks in exchange for half-baked promises
to keep employers on the payroll. If the ERTC seems like a Republican
solution to widespread economic fallout, that’s because it is
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AS THE FULL WEIGHT of Neal’s legacy comes bearing down on
Massachusetts, the First District has been hit especially hard.
Springfield, the district's largest city where Richard Neal first
entered politics as mayor, boasts the highest rate of asthma
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in the nation, as concentrated poverty jumped
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more than 10 points under Neal’s watch, exceeding 33 percent.

Meanwhile, broad swaths of the First District still don’t have
high-speed internet connections, leaving students struggling to
complete coursework
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employees asked to work remotely in increasingly dire straits. For
years western Massachusetts hilltowns have struggled to enter the
information age
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without high-speed broadband. (A 2015 map
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of internet access in the first district shows huge swaths with
glacial broadband and sometimes no access at all.)

In the past year, with the prodding of progressive Massachusetts Sen.
Ed Markey, Neal joined in the effort to secure federal funding to
expand broadband in his own district over the next 10 years. But as
anyone living in the hilltowns will tell you, 10 years for broadband
is too little too late.

Driving through the worst hit parts of western Mass during COVID,
it’s hard not to feel like Richard Neal’s legacy is anything other
than a beckoning toward the end times: crumbling factories and
abandoned strip malls; shuttered businesses and restaurants. If
anywhere reflects a real turnaround, it’s Holyoke, a working-class
milltown where the efforts of Alex Morse have brought massive
increases in low-income housing, a thriving cannabis industry, and the
prospect of widespread economic renewal. It could be that despite his
war chest, the end times are coming for Neal, not his district.

While Richard Neal’s office did not respond to multiple requests for
comment, Alex Morse had harsh words for the reigning representative:
“People in this district are looking for leadership that meets the
moment and power that goes beyond a title. Families in Holyoke and
Springfield, in the Berkshires and the hilltowns, are fighting to put
food on the table, make their rent payments, and keep the doors of
their small businesses open. They want to turn on the TV and see their
representative fighting with them in the trenches. Instead, our
congressman is standing in the way of policies that will make a real
difference now like the Paycheck Guarantee Act and Health Care
Emergency Guarantee Act.”

Daniel Boguslaw is a writer and researcher living in New York.

Read the original article at Prospect.org.
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Used with the permission. The American Prospect, Prospect.org, 2020.
All rights reserved.

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