How About a Health Care Sunshine Week?
The White House earlier today released its first statement regarding “Sunshine Week” and freedom of information. Of course, when it comes to freedom of information regarding the Administration’s backroom deals on health care, the White House takes a much different tack. As was previously reported, the White House counsel sent a memo to House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee rejecting their request for details of meetings held with special interest groups on the grounds that providing the information on the secret meetings “would constitute a vast and expansive undertaking” – suggesting that the scope of the closed-door meetings may have been far greater than imagined.
President Obama hasn’t attempted to argue the process leading to the law was transparent, admitting in a January 2010 interview with Diane Sawyer that even “amongst supporters…we just don’t know what’s going on” behind closed doors. That same month, Speaker Pelosi herself laughed at the concept of televising the negotiations on C-SPAN, publicly mocking the President’s repeated campaign promises.
Unfortunately, however, the White House’s rejection of House Republicans’ document request is just the latest example of how the Administration’s transparency hasn’t improved since the bill passed. In January, the Administration was forced to withdraw controversial regulations that had not been subjected to public comment – after e-mails from Congressional staff indicating they should “not broadcast this accomplishment” by publicly advertising the existence of this secret rule, in a clear attempt to keep the public from having input on an important regulation.
Candidate Obama promised repeatedly that all the health care negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN, so the White House – by the President’s own standards – has NO reason to withhold documents about the negotiations themselves. According to the President’s rhetoric, the American public has every right to know the details of the Administration’s “rock-solid deal” with Big Pharma – and the circumstances regarding the windfall that the PhRMA-sponsored ad campaign brought to David Axelrod’s consulting firm (which just so happened to be paying Axelrod a multi-million dollar severance package).
The President could give the American people a gift this “Sunshine Week” by taking the opportunity to release the documents of the behind-closed-door negotiations he had promised to open to the public – “so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the pharmaceutical companies.” Of course, the continued lack of transparency during both the legislative and the regulatory process surrounding the health law also supports the case for its repeal – so Congress can get back to work on true health care solutions that will reduce costs without resulting in the backroom deals that marred the process over the last two years.