The First Missed Deadline — But Not the Last…
You may be aware that Section 1552 of the health care law – entitled “Transparency in Government” – requires the HHS Secretary to list on the Department’s website within 30 days “a list of all the authorities provided to the Secretary” under the Act. Such a list could allow members of the public to determine what types of powers HHS will hold in the 159 new bureaucracies and programs established in the law. Senators Grassley, Enzi, and Gregg sent a letter to Secretary Sebelius last week reminding her of her statutory obligation to issue such a list by April 23. Yet Friday’s deadline came and went without such a list being publicly released, as the law required.
HHS’ non-compliance with its statutory requirements came during the same week in which the White House began mailing out millions of government-funded postcards touting a small business tax credit in the law and hired a political operative “to aid in selling health care” before the November mid-term elections. So which is the Administration’s top priority: Implementing the law as required, or creating taxpayer-funded propaganda campaigns to bail out Democrats who voted for this unpopular government takeover of health care?
UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out that HHS has a section of its website titled “Health Reform and the Department of Health and Human Services.” It is in fact a list, and it does include the word “authorities” at the top, but it certainly doesn’t make more transparent what explicit authorities HHS believes it has as a result of the new law. Instead, the website just lists the law’s table of contents, and allow individuals to pore through the law’s 2,800-plus pages to attempt to decipher the statute – hardly a victory for clarity and transparency in government.
It is far from an academic exercise to ask the department charged with interpreting much of the new law to provide its views of the scope – and limits – of the statute. For instance, does HHS believe the law gives them the authority to deny patients drugs or therapies because bureaucrats consider them too expensive? The Administration’s nominee to head Medicare, Donald Berwick, supports using such authority to deny patients access to life-saving treatments, writing that “the decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” It’s worth asking whether HHS has declined to release a clearer and more definitive list of the scope and limits of its authority under the law because it intends to use that law to impose arbitrary rationing of care by government bureaucrats.