A preference for details over duck hunting

Healthcare lobbying is a growth industry, as Linda Tarplin sees it, and she’s making a serious play to grab a piece of the action.

“Healthcare legislation continues to become a bigger part of what Congress does, and working on healthcare legislation continues to become more complicated and more important,” Tarplin says from behind her desk at the spiffy New York Avenue N.W. office of her new firm, Tarplin Downs & Young.

The veteran healthcare lobbyist recently launched the small specialty healthcare shop with two colleagues who have similar experience and similarly top-quality contacts in the executive branch and Congress.

“We’re all well-connected in the … [Department of Health and Human Services] and White House and Hill arenas,” says Tarplin. She worked in legislative affairs for the George H.W. Bush White House and at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Bush and Reagan. Before that, she worked on healthcare legislation for then-Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.)

Raissa Downs and Jennifer Young are Tarplin’s partners. Downs joins the firm from Barbour Griffith & Rogers after working as a senior member of the HHS legislative-affairs shop during this administration and a senior aide to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). Young is new to lobbying, having left HHS last year as assistant secretary for legislation. Her r