Breaking Promises

McJoan (Daily Kos): Private Health Groups Already Breaking Promise to Obama

Here's a shocker.

Just four days after standing next to President Obama and declaring their commitment to control health care costs to the tune of $2 trillion over 10 years, the insurance industry, drug and medical device makers, and hospital groups are backing off their promise

From the NYTimes:

After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.

"These groups are voluntarily coming together to make an unprecedented commitment," Mr. Obama said. "Over the next 10 years, from 2010 to 2019, they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion."

Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.

I just happen to have a copy of the letter [pdf] that these organizations released on Monday, and it pretty clearly exactly says:

To achieve all of these goals, we have joined together in an unprecedented effort, as private sector stakeholders—physicians, hospitals, other health care workers, payors, suppliers, manufacturers, and organized labor—to offer concrete initiatives that will transform the health care system. As restructuring takes hold and the population's health improves over the coming decade, we will do our part to achieve your Administration’s goal of decreasing by 1.5 percentage points the annual health care spending growth rate—saving $2 trillion or more. This represents more than a 20% reduction in the projected rate of growth. We believe this approach can be highly successful and can help the nation to achieve the reform goals we all share.

Now, the Hospital Association's executive vice president, Richard J. Pollack is saying: "The groups did not support reducing the rate of health spending by 1.5 percentage points annually." I'm not entirely sure how he interprets "1.5 percent points in the annual health care spending growth rate" but it pretty much reads to me like Richard J. Pollack is full of shit and a reneger.

Back at HuffPo (and over in the diaries, too), Jason Rosenbaum sums it up:

So we've gone from commitments to eventualities, targets, and non-specific understandings. This just proves what the American people have known all along: You can't trust the insurance industry with health care reform. They're liars. They're cheats. They're greedy. They're untrustworthy. They cannot be trusted to come up with a health care reform plan that works for you and me. We must make them do it.

To that end, Matt Singer has a suggestion: "You can contact AHIP online or at 202.778.3200."

ChrisinParis: Big Business lobbyists: Obama is mean to us

Sniffle, sniffle, sniffle. Sounds like some still can't accept their own responsibility for the economic failures that triggered the recession. The business lobbyists are crying "class warfare" so you know we're not far away from hearing about socialism. Oh those crocodile tears.

Some business leaders have focused on the harsh words lately, saying the president is being unduly divisive.

"It is traditional class-warfare rhetoric," said Jade West, a lobbyist for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. "It's a little bit frightening."

Bill Miller, political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called Obama's remarks "an oversimplification of the real world."

Particularly in the areas of finance and taxation, Obama's language often seems to echo, and perhaps fuel, public anger over matters such as the large bonuses paid to executives of AIG, an insurance giant that was bailed out with public money.

Fueling public anger? Hardly. If anything, Obama is well behind the curve on this. The public is fuming over the continued easy treatment of Wall Street and big business and Obama is playing catch-up.