Hope and Fail

Holding health care negotiations in private

As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to hold negotiations with health care stakeholders in public — on C-SPAN — but the White House's and Congress' deals with doctors, insurance companies and drug companies have been brokered in private.

In debates and during stump speeches during the 2008 presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama pledged to hold negotiations on health care in public — specifically, to broadcast them on C-SPAN.

Since becoming president, Obama has been brokering deals with doctors, drug makers, insurers and hospitals to get them to support his push for health care reform — and those meetings were held out of public view.

From the Associated Press:

In cutting deals with hospitals and drug makers, President Barack Obama is giving a private inside track to special interests that’s at odds with his promise to make policy in the open.

Obama promised Americans he would hold special interests at arm’s length – that it would no longer be business as usual in Washington. He pledged to open government and let the public and press hold his administration accountable.

And just over two months before the 2008 election, Obama promised before an audience in Chester, Va., to hash out a health care overhaul in public. “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,” he said then.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, the administration’s multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies have been made in private, and the results were announced after the fact. Both industries promised Obama cost savings in return for an expanded base of insured patients; beyond that, the public is in the dark about details.

In some ways, it resembles what his party criticized President George W. Bush for doing with oil and gas companies as Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a national energy plan in the early days of the Bush administration.

And from McClatchy:

Campaigning for president, Barack Obama said repeatedly that any overhaul of the health care system should be negotiated publicly and televised for all to see. Throughout this year’s negotiations, however, the big deals have been struck in secret.

With tax increases and limits on what’s covered among the possible ways of offsetting perhaps $1 trillion over a decade in expenses, neither the administration nor Congress is willing to give up its right to do the most sensitive talking in private, as it’s always been done. …

The notion of televising negotiations behind a health care revamp was so central to Obama’s campaign promises of change and openness, however, that it became part of his stump speech as he traveled the country in 2007 and 2008.

He’d describe how televised deliberations would take place around a big table, with seats filled by doctors, nurses, insurers and other interested parties. As president, he’d joke, he’d get the biggest chair.

“Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN,” Obama explained in a Democratic debate in Los Angeles in January 2008, in language similar to many of his campaign stops.

However, the two biggest deals so far — industry agreements to cut drug and hospital costs — were reached in secret.

There is no doubt that negotiations are likely more productive in private, but Obama promised — on multiple occasions — to keep health care negotiations public, so the people would know what the options are. Here’s an example, from the Democratic debate on Jan. 31, 2008:

That’s what I did in Illinois, to provide insurance for people who did not have it. That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are.

Because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process. And overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists who — Senator Clinton is right. They will resist anything that we try to do. My plan, her plan, they will try to resist.

… This is something that I’ve been talking about consistently. What I want to do is increase transparency and accountability to offset the power of the special interests and the lobbyists.

Save/Share: