Healthcare Negotiations

Candidate Barack Obama promised that healthcare negotiations would be out in the open, publicized on CSPAN. Is that change you can believe in?

Is it my imagination or did he say CSPAN would televise “healthcare plan” negotiations?

Barack Obama Campaign Promise No. 517: Negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN

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To achieve health care reform, “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”

Sources: Town hall meeting on Aug. 21, 2008, in Chester, Va.

Is everything out in the open?

White House Affirms Deal on Drug Cost

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WASHINGTON — Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion. [...]

The pressure from [Big Pharma lobbyist Billy Tauzin] Mr. Tauzin to affirm the deal offers a window on the secretive and potentially risky game the Obama administration has played as it tries to line up support from industry groups typically hostile to government health care initiatives, even as their lobbyists pushed to influence the health measure for their benefit.[...]

After reaching an agreement with Mr. Baucus, Mr. Tauzin said, he met twice at the White House with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff; Mr. Messina, his deputy; and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the aide overseeing the health care overhaul, to confirm the administration’s support for the terms.

“They blessed the deal,” Mr. Tauzin said. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House was not bound by any industry deals with the Senate or the White House.

OK, so drug makers get theirs. Is there a quid pro quo?

Report: White House, Democratic Officials Enlisted Corporate Lobbyists for Health Reform Campaign

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Advertising!

A meeting among White House officials, Democratic aides and corporate lobbyists in April resulted in the creation of two groups that have spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads bolstering health reform efforts.

Aides to President Obama and a key Senate Democrat met with corporate lobbyists in April to help launch a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to drum up support for health care reform, one that was largely financed by industry groups, Politico reported Friday.

The meeting reportedly resulted in the creation of two groups that have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads bolstering health reform efforts.

Politico reports that among those attending the April 15 meeting with lobbyists at the offices of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee were Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina and Jon Selib, the chief of staff to Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Finance Committee, which this week passed a 10-year, $829 billion health overhaul.

The campaign was part of a successful effort by Democrats to form an unlikely alliance with what traditionally have been opponents of health care reform. Both sides insist nothing unethical occurred.

Does it ever end?

To ’round things out, here is where we started:

Candidate Barack Obama promised that healthcare negotiations would be out in the open, publicized on CSPAN. Is that change you can believe in?

Now… In today’s news!

Small Group Now Leads Closed Negotiations on Health-Care Bill

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Three months before he was elected president, Barack Obama vowed not only to reform health care but also to pass the legislation in an unprecedented way.

“I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table,” he said at an appearance in Chester, Va., repeating an assertion he made many times. He said the discussions would be “televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

But now, as a Senate vote on health-care legislation nears, those negotiations are occurring in a setting that is anything but revolutionary in Washington: Three senators are working on the bill behind closed doors.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) sits at the head of a wooden table at his office as he and Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) work to merge two competing versions of health-care legislation into one bill. The three men will be joined by top aides as well as by members of President Obama’s health-care team, led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The sessions started on Wednesday and could be completed this week.

The group will make such key decisions as whether to include a government-run insurance plan designed to compete with private insurance companies. The bill passed in July by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which Dodd led while Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) was ailing, included such a provision, but the legislation passed last week by Baucus’s Finance Committee did not.

So what will; be in the legislation? Will the public know, and how did it get there?

Candidate Barack Obama promised that healthcare negotiations would be out in the open, publicized on CSPAN. Is that change you can believe in?

Shout at the wind. Discuss.