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Burgess, Barton Receive Terse Response From Administration On Inquiry Into Secret Health Negotiations
Posted by on March 17, 2010 | comments
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Late Monday night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee received two very brief letters from the chief counsels at the White House and Department of Health and Human Services in response to the committee’s February letter requesting more information on the negotiations or agreements reached last May at a health reform meeting at the White House. The bipartisan committee letter was sent on February 17, 2010, and signed by Chairman Henry Waxman (D-California), Ranking Member Joe Barton (R-Texas), and Congressman Michael Burgess, M.D. (R-Texas), ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

“These letters are just one more example of this Administration’s desperate attempt to pass their ill-conceived health reform bill using gimmicks, bribes, and, in this case, false claims of transparency and goodwill. What is worse is that the Administration is asking the American people to believe there are no secret deals, while touting the deals and their impact on the debate the very next minute,” Burgess said. “Their proposed reforms would affect every single American, and my serious attempts to shed some light on the deals and negotiations, so that the American people can understand how they will be affected, have been taken lightly by this Administration and repeatedly brushed off. As I have said before, the integrity of health reform legislation and the Congressional process has been jeopardized by the handling of health reform, and in particular, these side negotiations orchestrated by the White House.”

“President Obama promised a transparent administration when he took office, but now it looks like what passes for transparency is a new promise to be transparent wrapped up in old speeches on health care,” Barton said. “I thought we were past the time where an official could tell the public that ‘it depends on what the meaning of is is,’ but now it seems likely that we’re only a couple of questions away from getting that response all over again. Put me down as disappointed, but not so disappointed that I’m going to accept copies of speeches in lieu of real documentation of administration actions.”

The committee letter stemmed from a January markup of a Resolution of Inquiry introduced by Burgess, which requested documents, information on agreements made, names of individuals present and other information about the May 2009 meeting at the White House. The meeting brought together Administration officials and representatives from six groups involved in health reform – Advanced Medical Technology Association, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Hospital Association, and the Service Employees International Union. When the participants emerged from the meeting, an agreement was announced that they would work to decrease by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate, but little to no details as to how this would be accomplished were released.

“With almost nine out of ten Americans asking Congress to either start over or stop all efforts on health reform, the people see through the Administration’s promises, including those of unprecedented transparency, and have clearly had enough of their efforts to jam through Congress their health reform bill,” Burgess added.

BACKGROUND:
On September 30, 2009, Burgess sent a letter to the White House requesting information on the meetings. After 77 days of silence from the White House and weeks of working with Chairman Waxman to get the information from the White House, Burgess introduced H. Res. 983, a Resolution of Inquiry, on December 16, 2009, again requesting the information. Because the Resolution would become privileged on the House floor if it was not considered by the Committee within 14 legislative days of introduction, Chairman Waxman scheduled a markup of H. Res. 983 for January 27, 2010.

Late in the day on January 26, 2010, the day before the scheduled markup, Burgess received a response from the White House to his September letter – 119 days after the process began. Noting that the White House response was inadequate, during the January 27 hearing the Committee’s members voted unanimously to report the Burgess Resolution without recommendation, and Waxman and Barton vowed to help Burgess receive much of the requested information.

On February 17, 2010, Waxman, Barton and Burgess sent letters to the White House and HHS again requesting information on the meetings, and offered a March 12, 2010 deadline.

Three days past the deadline, late in the evening on March 15, 2010, responses from the counsels at the White House and HHS were received.


Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D., is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations, and a member of the Health and Energy & Environment subcommittees. He is also a member of the bipartisan, bicameral Joint Economic Committee. Prior to becoming a member of Congress in 2002, Congressman Burgess practiced medicine in North Texas for over 25 years.
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