When the Washington "revolving door" collides with the "sphere of influence" the result looks sort of like Andy Warhol doing health reform. Or maybe Jackson Pollock.

The graphic below  shows the nexus of health industry lobbyists who once worked for the Senate Finance Committee or its members. And that's just one of the five major committees in the House and Senate dealing with health reform.

The Washington Post did an in-depth analysis of the health reform lobbying binge and found that the health care industry is spending more than $1.4 million a day (a stimulus package for K Street). The newspaper's analysis looked only at industry spending; pro-reform advocacy groups are also active and better funded than in the Clinton era fight. The American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network, for just one example, is doing paid advertising on reform, and of course groups like MoveOn.org are quite visible in places like North Carolina.

The Post analysis, done in part with data from the Center for Responsive Politics, identified more than 350 former government aides lobbying on health reform, each representing an average of four firms or trade groups. That doen't mean they are all trying to kill comprehensive health care reform. But they are trying to shape it in a way that helps their clients. The Post writes:

Public interest groups and reform advocates complain that the concentration of former government aides on K Street has distorted the health-care debate, and that it further illustrates the problem posed by the "revolving door" between government and private firms.

"The revolving door offers a short cut to a member of Congress to the highest bidder," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which compiled some of the data used in The Post's analysis. "It's a small cost of doing business relative to the profits they can garner."

The tally, moreover, did not include lobbyists who did not report earlier government experience, such as PhRMA President W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, who as a Republican House committee chair helped write the Medicare drug bill before going on to earn millions heading the pharmaceutical lobby.

Overall, health-care companies and their representatives spent more than $126 million on lobbying in the first quarter, leading all other industries, according to CRP and Senate data. PhRMA led the pack in spending and employs 49 former government staff members among its 136 lobbyists, according to The Post's analysis. Dozens of other former insiders are employed as lobbyists by Pfizer, Eli Lilly, the AMA and the American Hospital Association, each of which spent at least $3.5 million on lobbying from January through March.

At the end of the day, health care legislation will involve compromises, as any major legislative initiative must. How much those compromises bear the imprint of K Street is not yet known. In the next few weeks, Congress will finally have to start making the choices. And as New America's health policy director Len Nichols told  Reuters' John Whitesides earlier today, "choices are hard."