> suggest something as vulgar as empirical analysis? We could--gasp!--ask
business leaders
> and execs of professional associations, either as scholars or journalists,
what shapes !
> lobbying decisions? Why are certain lobbying decisions made and others
avoided.
Good point, but it does not mean that you will the true answers - all you may get is politically correct ones. These folks do not like spilling their guts - they have a certain image to maintain.
As to you point that labor control provides insufficient explanation of corporate resistance to single payer system, I think it is a combination of several factors. Labor control is one of them - but there are others. For example, there are plenty interest groups who benefit from the current system and thus lobby to preserve it, but there are no strong lobbying interests (except public interest groups who do not wield the same power) for a single payer. Corporations may not lobby for it for a rather prosaic reason that it is of low importance to them (since they can simply cut health care costs if they need to) - so the interest of insurance corps, AMA, and those who oppose the single payer system for ideological reasons prevail. Another reason is that no serious political player can propose such a system for the fear of red baiting. Corporate may not feel strongly about it either way, but GOP-bots are almost certain to smear it as 'socialism" simply to score a political victory overt their opponents, not because it will undermine capitalism.
I think that the garbage can theory of organizational behavior may provide some useful insights into this issue. According to this theory, organizations with multiple stakeholders having various agendas and conflicting interests will settle on the path of the least resistance to these stakeholders (which is also called "satisficing"), but will justify that course of action in terms of the prevailing cultural norms, expectations and ideologies - e.g. as "efficiency maximizing," "reducing government interference in people's lives," and the like.
Wojtek