C-SPAN Much? Obamacare Still Lacking Transparency
Yesterday afternoon the Administration released new guidance regarding a federal fallback Exchange for those states who decide not to create a state-based Exchange under Obamacare. The 19-page guidance follows on the heels of other “bulletins” issued this year regarding actuarial value and essential health benefits; yesterday’s document also admits that additional guidance documents will follow.
Politico this morning hints at why the Administration is releasing all these “guidance” and “bulletin” documents rather than going through the official notice-and-comment rulemaking process: “The Department hasn’t yet crunched the numbers on how much [a federal Exchange] would cost….Those details won’t be hashed out until the fall.” In other words, the Administration doesn’t want to reveal the full costs of Obamacare – both the federal spending required and the impact of its many new regulations – until after the presidential election. Does anyone want to guess whether these official rules and cost-estimates get released BEFORE or AFTER November 6 – to pick a date completely at random?
On a related note, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a memo into other forms of non-transparency by the Administration – this time regarding the “rock-solid deal” between Democrats and Big Pharma. The memo relies on internal documents to confirm that such a deal took place – and the White House was a direct party to it. It quotes an e-mail from Jim Messina, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, to Pharma lobbyists saying “This wasn’t part of our deal.”
The irony of Messina’s statement is that the American people are saying the same thing – these backroom horse-trades and political shenanigans weren’t part of Barack Obama’s “deal” with voters. He repeatedly promised that he would hold all the negotiations 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.” Yet the Obama Administration made an explicit deal with Big Pharma behind closed doors, and is still attempting to hide the details of both its Pharma “deal” and the true costs of Obamacare’s regulations to the American people. That may be a change in position from four years ago – and a big one at that – but it’s not one the American people can believe in.