One of the media narratives in the health care debate is that the battle is between astroturfing special interest groups and benevolent activists only interested in the public good. Enter Stephen Spruiell writing in the National Review:

The Friday before Halloween, in response to requests from the public, the White House released records of the visitors it had received between January and July...the man who appeared most frequently is less well-known. His name is Andrew Stern, and during the first six months of Obama's tenure, he visited the White House 21 times — about three times per month. Most of these visits included an intimate meeting with the president or other senior officials. Stern is president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a federation of health-care, public-sector, and custodial workers that claims approximately 2 million members.

...Stern's real breakthrough came when he realized that labor could offer a carrot as well as a stick Around 50 percent of SEIU's members work in the health-care industry as nurses, hospital attendants, and lab techs. The facilities that employ such workers benefit from a number of government programs. SEIU's pitch was simple: Let us organize your workforce, and we'll use our lobbying power to push for increased government spending on health care.

It worked. Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo recently observed in The Weekly Standard that, "under the brilliant leadership of Dennis Rivera, [SEIU Local] 1199 built a top-notch political operation, and with the hospitals, which were barred from political activity, formed a partnership to maximize the flow of government revenue." The alliance has been so successful, they wrote, that New York now spends as much on Medicaid as California and Texas combined. Rivera now serves as the SEIU's point man on national health-care-reform legislation, with over 400 union staff members working full time at his disposal. Sen. Chuck Schumer called him "one of the few key players" shaping the final bill.

In pursuit of his vision, Stern has turned the SEIU into a massive grassroots army that can mobilize in behalf of candidates and legislation...SEIU has set aside $85 million to spend over the next two years on political advocacy. The union started the year with three major objectives: a union-friendly stimulus, a union-friendly health-care bill, and a bill that would make it easier to organize workers into unions.

...SEIU has poured millions into a group called Health Care for America Now, which has dispatched envoys to deliver portable pavilions, professionally printed placards, and uniform attire at almost every major health-care protest this year. Dennis Rivera sent hundreds of union activists to meetings this summer in an attempt to counteract opposition to the Democrats' bill. "We're running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health-care reform," Rivera told the New York Times. Why does SEIU care so much about health-care reform? The subsidies and mandates in Democrats' legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU.

The creation of a government-run insurance plan is an especially important priority for the SEIU. "The nexus between government and private industry would give SEIU a toehold to organize more workers," explains J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts. Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option "might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions," Wilson says.

These three goals have one thing in common: All are meant to raise the percentage of workers who belong to a union...This is good for unions, but it's even better for liberals. The past three decades have seen unions embrace left-wing positions on everything from affirmative action to gay marriage to the war in Iraq....The bigger unions grow, the more power they have, as Andrew Stern will tell anyone who will listen. Stern's obsession with size has embroiled the labor movement in some of the nastiest fights it has ever seen. Old-school union guys like Sal Roselli, a former Stern lieutenant whose National Union of Healthcare Workers split from SEIU earlier this year in a bitter divorce, told Bradford Plumer that "Stern's drive for growth at all costs" had caused him to ignore what was in the best interest of his members. But Andrew Stern was a liberal before he was a union organizer, just as Obama was a liberal before he was a community organizer. Unions may have existed to serve workers' interests at one time. These days, they exist to serve liberalism.

There is more, much, much more, go read it here.  And go here to see what real health care reform looks like.