What do the former vice president of public policy at WellPoint, Inc. (the nation’s largest insurer), a former U.S. Senate Finance Committee counsel, the reputed author of the Affordable Care Act signed into law in March, and the new deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have in common? Simple—they’re one and the same person. Meet Elizabeth Fowler, PhD, JD.

Fowler is a poster girl for one of the major problems in Washington: the revolving door between the halls of government and corporate corridors.

As a chief health and entitlements counsel for Sen. Max Baucus and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee from 2001-2005, Liz Fowler oversaw Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and other issues and initiatives. She was a major player in drafting the 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act, an Orwellian moniker that belies its huge giveaway to the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. You may remember that it’s the law that gave us the prescription coverage donut hole and the government subsidized privatized Medicare Advantage plans.

In 2006, off Fowler went to WellPoint, Inc. where she held the position of vice president of public policy. In 2008, with health care reform looming on the horizon, she returned to the Baucus Finance Committee, this time as chief health counsel. In that capacity she headed the team that drafted the Affordable Care Act. The public option was conspicuous by virtue of its absence from the legislation. In fact, Bill Moyers called Fowler “the destroyer of the public option”. But what else would you expect from a former vice president of public policy at WellPoint?

With her work drafting the public option-less legislation finished, many expected Fowler would travel through the revolving door back to the private health insurance industry where we expect she would be welcomed with open arms. Instead, the door leads her to another of government’s hallowed halls. She will be the deputy director of the Office of Consumer Information and Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In other words, she will be overseeing the implementation of the law she essentially crafted.

Since the Department of Health and Human Services is still devising rules for implementing the new health care legislation, Liz Fowler is now in a position to determine how the law she wrote will be carried out. That’s an awful lot of power over health care in the U.S. in the hands of one person, particularly one who was a health insurance industry vice president, don’t you think?

Chances are that the story of the Fowler appointment to the post at Health and Human Services is news to you. That might be because the story broke in, of all places, the Billings (Montana) Gazette and was subsequently shared by columnist David Sirota at the Huffington Post. Congratulations and thanks to Mike Dennison of the Billings Gazette for covering this and to David Sirota for spreading the word.

By no means is Liz Fowler a rare example of the government—corporate revolving door syndrome. Actually, she is the rule rather than an exception. It’s a sad commentary on our alleged democracy that this sort of thing happens all the time, whether the corporate interest is in health care, oil, Wall Street, or Blackwater types in the military industrial complex. It behooves us to keep our eyes on Fowler. Just about the time that the major aspects of the health care legislation kick in and we get a clear picture of what she has wrought, what do you wanna bet that she heads back through the revolving door to the comfort of her private insurance industry benefactors.