Last weekend, the New York Times featured a front-page article revealing that more than two dozen lawmakers entered speeches into the Congressional Record that were written by lobbyists for the big biotechnology company Genentech.

The article's headline read "In House Record, Many Spoke With One Voice: The Lobbyists' " and the story was presented as something of a shocking revelation. But to observers of Congress, lobbyists doing lawmakers' work is ho-hum news.

It's troubling, but educational, to note that lobbyists far outnumber lawmakers in Washington, D.C. To understand the forces at work in the current health care reform debate, it's important to know that for every member of Congress, there are six lobbyists representing health care special interests.

Lobbyists have been known to have played a major role in drafting numerous pieces of legislation. When President George W. Bush promoted, and Congress passed, the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefits law, the fingerprints of drug makers' lobbyists were evident. How else to explain a dramatic expansion of drug benefits, paid for by taxpayers, that prohibited the federal government from using its buying power to negotiate lower drug prices.

And today, lobbyists clearly are behind many parts of the health care reform bills moving through Congress. The public's interest is almost an afterthought, positioned well behind the profits of the health insurance industry, drug makers, hospitals, medical device makers and doctors. Health care reform will be a failure, at least in terms of bringing about significant cost reductions that put U.S. health care spending in line with that of other countries, if special interests' profits are seen as off- limits. And, so far, that's mostly how it's been going.

The White House has engaged in the same sort of behavior, selling short the public's best interests in exchange for political and financial support from the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and doctors. The Obama administration made a political calculation that is likely to lead to a largely ineffective reform effort, even if they still call it health care reform.

Trade groups representing various health care interests negotiated secret deals with President Barack Obama and White House officials in which they agreed to not work to block health care reform — but only if the White House agreed to shield their industry from cost-savings measures similar to those employed in all other countries with universal health coverage, such as making the most basic health insurance policies a nonprofit product, allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices and changing the way hospitals and doctors are compensated by moving away from the fee-for-service system that increases health care providers' income when additional tests and procedures are done, even if they do not improve the patient's health.

The health care industry, just like Wall Street and the financial industry, has so much influence over Washington, D.C., that any reform bills written in Congress are more likely to reflect the interests of lawmakers' financial supporters — lobbyists and the special interests that hire them — than the interests of taxpayers and average citizens.

To be fair, there is nothing inherently wrong with lobbyists. Quite often, lawmakers can benefit from the expertise of lobbyists, particularly on highly technical or complicated issues, including finance and health care. Ideally, lobbyists representing opposing views would be heard and given consideration.

Too often, lawmakers turn over the writing of laws to generous or well-connected lobbyists — and in some cases they also appear to turn over their votes.

With the latest version of health care reform having grown to about 2,000 pages, Americans should be suspicious about what's included in the details of the bills, especially who benefits and who pays — as well as where cost savings are being found and how much potential savings are being left on the table, with taxpayers left to pick up the tab.