By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Interest groups that spent the past year fighting over President Obama‘s health-care overhaul are quickly transforming themselves for battle in a new arena, working to sway the law to their benefit while helping the lawmakers who supported them during the bruising legislative debate.

Industry groups and labor unions will focus on attempting to steer implementation of the legislation to their advantage, including the writing of federal rules to govern insurance coverage, requirements for employers and the insurance exchanges created under the law. Many conservative groups that failed in their bid to stop the legislation have shifted their focus to attacking Democrats who backed the overhaul and to supporting efforts by more than a dozen GOP governors to challenge the law in court.

These and other efforts by outside interest groups suggest that the health-care legislation signed into law Tuesday by Obama will probably redirect, rather than end, the furious lobbying efforts that have surrounded the administration’s health-care plans. Insurers, drugmakers and other health-care companies have broken records for lobbying expenditures over the past year and show little sign of slowing their activities.

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