“Most Transparent” Administration’s “Public Outreach Campaign:” More Closed-Door Meetings!
Politico reports this morning on the Administration’s “Listening Tour” regarding Exchanges, and noted that HHS is being VERY selective in deciding who it will actually listen to:
The meetings are invite-only for groups working on implementing exchanges in the states (insurers, consumer advocates, etc.). During Monday’s session in Portland, they limited the first part of the session to a closed-door meeting just for government and state officials with the Western states, excluding California, which will participate in a September listening session. PULSE has learned the dates for the rest of the sessions have been tentatively scheduled as follows: Atlanta, Sept. 13; New York City, Sept. 21; Sacramento, Calif., Sept. 22; and Chicago, Sept. 26.
The HHS website claims that “in the weeks ahead, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury will conduct an aggressive outreach campaign and solicit public comment” on the Exchange regulations – but this “aggressive outreach campaign” apparently doesn’t apply to members of the general public, who need not bother showing up, and won’t be allowed into the meetings if they do. It’s likely for this reason that HHS hasn’t even bothered to post on its website the dates and specific locations these forums will be taking place (although if any readers have this information, feel free to pass it on…).
There are three ironies here. The first of course is that the “most transparent” Administration – which passed a 2,700 page bill into law using secretive negotiations – is once again conducting important regulatory business behind closed doors. Candidate Obama promised to televise all health care negotiations on C-SPAN, but the process leading up to Obamacare was plagued with notorious backroom deals. Yet once again HHS is slamming the door on members of both the public and the media through a closed-door process.
The second irony is the fact that the health care law was supposed to become more popular after it passed, yet HHS officials are apparently afraid of holding an open-door forum with members of the general public to solicit a broad range of views. After all, didn’t Democrats say that “by November [2010] those who voted for [Obamacare] will find it an asset and those who voted against it will find it a liability?” Yet one can ask whether these forums are being held behind closed doors precisely because the Administration fears a reprise of incidents where Secretary Sebelius learned what the American people think about passing 2,700 page bills “very fast” and not reading them before doing so.
That brings us to the third irony: That when it comes to implementing Obamacare, HHS would rather speak to self-appointed “consumer advocates” – i.e., liberal, pro-Obamacare organizations – rather than actual consumers. Even though HHS claims that Exchanges “offer Americans choice and clout,” the Administration apparently has little interest in finding out what ordinary Americans actually think. This behavior is sadly indicative of the whole philosophy of Obamacare, which focuses on having a little intellectual elite make health care decisions for everyone else. It means that liberal groups like Families USA and AARP – which don’t represent the whole American public, and may not even represent their own members – have an outsized influence, while the American public – which didn’t want Obamacare to pass in the first place – once again will get left out. So much for transparency and accountability from this Administration.