I'd rather forgotten this, but it fits right in with stuff I've been posting recently: President Obama promised completely open transparency in reforming health insurance by saying the negotiations would be "on C-Span." But how's that worked? Despite a lot of "stakeholder" discussion, the Obama transparency plan has been to hold closed-door meetings with health care executives and lobbyists while putting up a vigorous defense against lawsuits seeking to overturn the Bush White House policy of keeping visitor logs secret.
At his July 22 press conference, President Obama responded to a question about the secret visitor logs:
THE PRESIDENT: Well, on the list of health care executives who've visited us, most of the time you guys have been in there taking pictures, so it hasn't been a secret. And my understanding is we just sent a letter out providing a full list of all the executives. But frankly these have mostly been at least photo sprays where you could see who was participating.Evidently there were some secrets going on in there, given the industry-friendly position shifts that have been revealed in the last couple of weeks, including on the need for a public plan and prohibition on use of government clout to reduce drug prices.
With respect to all the negotiations not being on C-SPAN, you will recall in this very room that our kickoff event was here on C-SPAN, and at a certain point you start getting into all kinds of different meetings -- Senate Finance is having a meeting, the House is having a meeting. If they wanted those to be on C-SPAN then I would welcome it. I don't think there are a lot of secrets going on in there.
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