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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (18424)	9/6/2009 1:26:22 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

In Shift From Prior Administrations, White House to Open Visitor List By Michael A. Fletcher Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, September 5, 2009 washingtonpost.com President Obama said Friday he will make public an ongoing list of visitors to the White House, reversing a policy embraced and defended by previous presidents of both parties. Under the new policy, the names of visitors to the White House, from tourists to business leaders, will be made public for the first time. Obama's decision opens a window on efforts by some of those visitors to shape policy at the very top of the federal government. But the new rule has notable exceptions, including people who come for "particularly sensitive" meetings such as interviews for top jobs; personal guests of the first family; and visitors whose known presence at the White House would pose a national security risk. The White House characterized the move as evidence of Obama's commitment to foster "an open and transparent government." "For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available on an ongoing basis," Obama said in a statement. "We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history, not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policy-making process." The policy will take effect Sept. 15, and as soon as December the Obama administration will begin posting online the names of White House visitors from the previous 90 to 120 days. Officials said 70,000 to 100,000 people visit the White House each month. The policy change comes after lawsuits by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which had sought information from visitor logs dating to the Bush administration. The four lawsuits were settled Thursday with the White House's promise to make the information public. As part of the settlement, the White House released the names of some visitors to CREW. Among them were health-industry executives who met with Obama administration officials to discuss health-care reform. Officials also released the names of visitors to the White House under President George W. Bush. Those names included prominent Christian conservative leaders such as James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; the Rev. Jerry Falwell, president of Liberty University; and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition. Stephen Payne, a lobbyist who was videotaped by the Times of London allegedly offering meetings with senior Bush administration officials in exchange for large contributions to Bush's presidential library foundation, visited the White House 53 times, according to a tally by CREW. "The Obama administration has proven its pledge to usher in a new era of government transparency was more than just a campaign promise. The Bush administration fought tooth and nail to keep secret the identities of those who visited the White House," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. Open-government groups generally praised the policy shift, but some questioned whether the exemptions are too broad and whether the White House is waiting too long to release the names of visitors. "Why does the public have to wait as long as four months to find out who has been meeting with the administration?" asked Francesca Grifo, director of the scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The administration could make major decisions within that time frame." Grifo also called the exemption for people who attend "particularly sensitive" meetings "a huge loophole." Michael German, of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office, offered similar criticism. "While the new policy is commendable, some vaguely worded exceptions to it raise concerns about the potential for abuse in classifying matters under the umbrella of national security," he said. The White House also released Friday the names of 10 high-level employees who were granted waivers from its strict ethics code in order to join the administration. The waivers allowed the appointees to work on matters that could involve people with whom they had former professional relationships. The White House says it has granted 16 waivers in making about 1,890 appointments. The administration also has waived three times the ethics pledge against hiring former lobbyists, according to Norm Eisen, the White House ethics adviser. Staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (18424)	10/1/2009 10:23:23 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

States Show How Not To Fix Health Care By KERRI HOUSTON TOLOCZKO Since the debate over the government takeover of medical care exploded onto the national stage, advocates of market-based, patient-centered reforms have pointed to the failed government health care systems of Canada and the U.K. as examples of what America should not replicate. And rightfully so. Democrat proposals have duplicated many components of these systems, creating frighteningly similar base lines here to these unsuccessful foreign models of "universal" coverage. Yet we don't need to peer over borders and across oceans to find government health care that does not work; indeed, we have examples here in our United States. Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Maine have all created some version of government takeover or administration of health care, and all are a mess. Hawaii's Prepaid Healthcare Act and its coverage mandates have left Hawaiians with fewer coverage choices, higher costs and nearly double the number of uninsured. Recent budget cuts resulted in discontinuation of its coverage for children. Oregon's state-controlled care includes an official list that dictates what treatments will be covered based on annual budget constraints. If your disease is above the treatment line, you are covered. Below the line - you're not. However, patients being denied treatment often receive an additional note in their denial letters - the system telling them it will pay for "physician aid in dying." Oregon won't help you live, but it will help you die. In the three years since the Massachusetts "universal" coverage plan was launched, the state still has thousands of uninsured, costs have exploded to unsustainable levels, and waiting lists for treatments have appeared. Tennessee's "TennCare" program, an attempt to expand coverage to low-income uninsured, included dead people, escaped felons and NBA stars. It drove doctors and insurers out of the state, and has been on the brink of insolvency several times. Tennessee's Democrat governor, Phil Bredesen, recently went to Washington, D.C., to explain to Congress that government health care does not lower cost. But perhaps the worst - and closest - example of why a federal takeover of health care won't work comes from Maine. The name of Maine's government-run universal health care plan "Dirigo Health" is derived from the state's motto - "to lead." Fitting, as this failed attempt at government health care has led its people right off a cliff. Maine's universal coverage plan is most similar to the plans circulating on Capitol Hill. It was proposed in May 2003 by Democrat Gov. John Baldacci and passed a scant four weeks later. Much like the $787 billion federal "stimulus" plan that passed Congress in February of this year, nobody read the Dirigo plan either. While greasing the pipeline for quick passage of Dirigo Health, the governor assured that all of Maine's 128,000 uninsured would be covered by 2009, the bureaucracy would be streamlined and health costs lowered, and the plan would fund itself based on system savings with no tax increases - a similar claim to what President Obama has said about a new federal plan. Six years after it was passed, it has insured only 3% - roughly 3,400 - of the 128,000 promised. By 2007, the system was so broke that it closed to new enrollees. It still has not reopened and has also cut and capped benefits. The "streamlined" bureaucracy has cost the state's taxpayers $17 million in administrative costs to cover 9,600 people, leading one to wonder if there are more bureaucrats in the system than enrollees. Systemwide insurance costs have increased 74% since Dirigo was passed, and the governor and legislature have tried - unsuccessfully - to raise taxes to fund the system. Dirigo's more "efficient" bureaucracy started out with an aggregator agency for health records and a cost administration agency, but it now includes numerous councils to study this, that and anything else bureaucrats can conceive. These agencies also dictate to providers how much they can spend on new technologies and diagnostic machines even though these costs are borne by physicians and hospitals and not the state. Dirigo has failed because it lacks market forces, ignores the nature of the uninsured and was more interested in bloating its bureaucracy than providing care to patients. These states could have fixed the broken pieces of the system by implementing market-based, patient-centered reforms that bring people into the private insurance market, thus lowering costs and increasing access. Instead, they layered enormous bureaucracies over patients and physicians, and separated them both from each other and from quality care. Government intrusion is not reform. Congress must use the failures of state-run health care as cautionary tales of change to avoid. It's time to start pushing for real reforms that increase access and portability and, above all, protect the primacy of the doctor-patient relationship. . Houston Toloczko is senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Liberty and director of its Center for Health Security and Access.