Obama and PhRMA: Deal or No Deal?

“there was indeed a deal” That’s pretty unequivocal.

I read your story as well as Grim’s and Noah’s. Is there any source other than Billy Tauzin that says there was a deal?
There is a lot of slippery language certainly but the Grim piece has named senators saying that both Baucus and the White House saying there is no deal.

that would break a campaign promise that Barack Obama made when he was running for President

I don’t doubt you for a moment but I think it would be helpful if you were explicit about which campaign promise you were refering to.

We were never part of that deal. We are not bound by that deal.

The Senate isn’t bound by the deal either but according to your reporting, they’re going along with it. So is it really approriate to refer to it a ‘secret?. If it were TOO secret, it couldn’t be discussed and agreed to.

Yes, sources at the White House confirmed to me that there was a deal–precisely, a deal that they would not push the industry for cuts beyond the ones that it volunteered.

This passage from Noah’s piece has the links to the promise:

In striking the bargain with PhRMA, Obama broke a not-insignificant campaign promise (“Obama will repeal the ban on direct negotiation drug companies and use the resulting savings … to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality”). Candidate Obama, citing a paper by Roger Hickey, Jeff Cruz, and Dean Baker of the Institute for America’s Future, put the savings at $30 billion a year, which over a decade would be roughly twice the $156 billion savings envisioned by the energy and commerce committee. (Hickey, Cruz, and Baker proposed matching not Medicaid drug prices but those negotiated by the more straightforwardly socialist Veterans Administration.) By this reckoning, Tauzin swindled not $76 billion from President Obama but $220 billion. That’s nearly half what the House health reform bill expects to raise with its proposed surtax on incomes above $350,000!

Also, PhRMA’s negotiations in the Senate are being conducted behind closed doors with the Finance Committee.

I am assuming that all these games are part of the WH appearing to be all things to all people; and Brother Rahm does not increase my confidence in Pres Obama’s ability to get real reform with a viable public option.

If Tauzin is doing some undermining then the question: why did the WH do a deal? Did they really think Tauzin is a potential ally given his Republican past and track record.

The WH has lost the initiative and Congress is all over the map. That environment suits the Health Care industry. Sowing confusion is the name of the game.

Of course you knew that I always comment first and then read the links….

I can understand the desire on the part of the White House to not only neuter the potential resistance of the pharmaceutical industry, but to co-opt that into their “cooperation.”

Sorry, but I am not going to start clutching at my pearls yet in response to a potential broken campaign promise over a supposed deal on the part of the White House to control what comes out of the Congress, as “detailed” by what appears to be an opportunistic snake in the grass.

“deal that they would not push the industry for cuts beyond the ones that it volunteered.”

So that means you are reporting that your unnamed sources are saying that there will be no price negotiating and that Baucus and the Axelrod lied to Senators Brown Durbin?

KT, it’s all well and good saying that whether the deal is good or bad depends on the reform that ultimately passes but as someone who has done a lot of work in this area, knows the issues and the political aspects of getting reform through the Congress (and leaving aside the issue of a broken campaign promise), do you think this deal was a good idea in terms of getting something done?

I guess part of what I am asking is can you see any other way in which reform would pass without getting the Phrma people on board?

Maybe I am missing something here but even if we accept as fact that the White House got played on the Phrma deal, what exactly does that have to do with the public option.

Here is my thing, the media right now is constantly defining the public option as “controversial” which put it at the far left end of the spectrum to the average non poltical junkie. But not only does it enjoy tremendous public support from all manner of polls, it has also been included in every single bill that has come out of committee save the last one which is being hijacked now by 6 small state Senators who are bought and paid for by the health insurance industry. I understand that President Obama hasn’t drawn a line in the sand over this, in my mind its probably because he wants to get Senate Finance bill out of committee first, but here is the deal, why is reconcilliation even being considered by the Senate and the White House if not for a public option.

What other provision than a public option is in any bill that would make Democrats think that they couldn’t get to 60 votes to over come a filibuster? If you can’t come up with anything then the truth is all of this talk about using that process is due to the fact that a public option WILL be in a final version of the bill.

Now why does it even matter? Its because of the framing of the story. Right now if a public option is included in the final bill that gets passed it will be painted as “controversial” which isn’t a far cry from “radical”. And why? Because that is how the media is framing it right now, as just a bargaininig chip that the Democrats aren’t really serious about. And thats aside from the fact that the public options that are already included in each bill have already been watered down to the point where they don’t have much of a chance of bringing costs down the way a stronger public option would.

So again, I will admit that maybe it has just escaped me, but can someone connect the dots for me on how this Phrma deal makes a statement about the public option?

” connect the dots for me on how this Phrma deal makes a statement about the public option?”

Hey SG-this may answer your question.
From the NYT story yesterday

“The drug industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also opposes a public insurance plan. But its lobbyists acknowledge privately that they have no intention of fighting it, in part because their agreement with the White House provides them other safeguards.”

It bears mentioning again that the only real way for Obama to enforce the deal is to threaten to veto the legislation. Since that is a virtual immpossibility, it would appear that the real betrayal is taking place in the Senate.

I know this seems discordant in light of recent History but after all, he’s only the President.

sgw: the WH has not appeared to be in control of their OWN narrative. They are reacting, arm twisting and allowing solutions to grow like mushrooms. That is why the opposition has been effective.

How can we have recipients of Medicare join the Townhall mobs? One would think that seniors should know who is funding their medicare by now.

I feel that part of this is tied up with Pres Obama’s identity. There is a “whiteness” about the opponents that comes across in every shot of the “mobs”.

Paul, on inauguration day, I said to my wife that I felt sorry for Obama. He had somehow done the impossible and reached millions of people while still being a politician. I suspected then and it is now confirmed that the public would never be able to rise up to the challenge he presented. I also suspected that there would be no middle ground for him; either he would be one of best Presidents ever, or one of the worse and the difference between the two didn’t rest solely on his shoulders.

Time and again during the campaign, he put his faith in the people of the US and surprisingly (to me, at least), they rewarded that faith. Unfortunately, I think that that faith is now being pi**ed on by the public rather than rewarded.

SG:

Great to see that you’ve returned to commentary.

‘I feel that part of this is tied up with Pres Obama’s identity. There is a “whiteness” about the opponents that comes across in every shot of the “mobs”.’

Pretty well sums up all his opposition since he won the nomination in August, and the Republicans in particular.

And yet so far he has had at least decent bills comeout of 4 of the 5 Congressional committees needed to pass health care reform. Don’t get me wrong, nobody is doing any endzone dances yet, but what has been accomplished so far is for damn sure historic. You just don’t hear anybody in the media saying it because most of them are cynical. They have seen Democratic Presidents try to do health care reform before and come up short. But have any of them been this close to actually getting the job done? Hell no.

Messaging would be great, political courage of Dems in Congress would be greater IMHO. Especially those on the Senate Finance Committee who can tell Baucus that he can take his bill and shove it up his arse.

Of course it’s about Obama’s identity. How different are the mobs at the townhalls to the people at the McCain and Palin and those videos that we all saw before the election.

Personally, the WH has been pretty clear about what it wants, save for the public option – which it says it wants but hasn’t said that it’s a dealbreaker (as yet). Most of what it wants – the insurance exchange, tighter regulation for insurers, savings in Medicare etc. – are in all four versions of the bills already released and (should) have pretty solid cross party support. If they just wanted to pass that, they could do that tomorrow.

When people say Obama hasn’t been clear enough as to what he wants, I’m reminded of my wife and my arguing about where to go to dinner on a Saturday night. I’ll throw out a number of suggestions – Indian, Chinese, Pizza, Sushi – to which I’ll get no (or a v tepid) response until I throw my hands up. Half an hour later she’ll come back to me and say “So, tell me what you want to do? You haven’t told me what you want!”. My goal is to get some food and company with my loved one. Her goal is to give me some illusion of choice while waiting for me to hit upon the one place she wants to go (and for which she’s got shoes all ready!).

SZ
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Thanks, but I won’t be here long. Just contributing until it turns into a troll fest yet again.

Of course, in my example, I’m Obama and my wife is the loyal opposition.

Whether with corporate interests or talk-radio-elected rightists, negotiating away key, popular elements of reform to those aligned against any reform has always been how Democrats get things done in the Beltway.

@homerhk: My goal is to get some food and company with my loved one. Her goal is to give me some illusion of choice while waiting for me to hit upon the one place she wants to go…
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Hard to believe that we’re married to the same woman.

The New York Times (among other outlets) is also stating that there was a deal, citing Dan Pfeiffer by name (while noting that Jim Messina had also gone on record for the white house regarding the deal.)
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at the same time, however, Congresscritters are telling the media that the White House told them “no deal.”
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in other words, it looks like Team Obama is screwing this up in a huge way — not merely negotiating a bad deal with drug companies behind everyone’s back, but then saying different things to different people once the deal has been exposed…
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/health/policy/07lobby.html?hpw

But, but, but Karen! Don’t you know that Obama is smarter than all of us, and is already five moves ahead of everybody else!

From the Noah piece in Slate:

But when you very deliberately aren’t controlling the legislative process, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to cut deals with special interests about what that legislation will contain.

Unless you don’t intend on keeping that deal…or, rather, you don’t intend to stand in the way of Congress breaking that deal. There’s an update to the Noah piece:

[Update, 7:40 p.m.:

Asked at today's White House briefing about the contradiction between the Tauzin deal and what the energy and commerce committee passed, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said: "I do think—look, I think the goal of all of those at the table, particularly the president, is to see costs come down and to see progress made on that. But I don't want to get ahead of negotiating what might be bill differences."

This at least allows for the possibility that the White House will renege on its ill-advised bargain with PhRMA.]

If the White House allows the removal of the ban on negotiation of drug prices to proceed unimpeded, then what looks like a ‘dumb move’ to bring Big Pharma on board looks more like a move to keep an influential player in the debate over health care reform on the sidelines.

Big ‘If’, though.

this is fascinating.
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Obama breaks all kinds of campaign promises (not just specific ones about the drug companies, but the entire basis of his campaign’s pledges about no backroom deals, and emphasis on transparency) in order to make a bad deal with the drug companies, and everyone here is trying to blame everyone but the White House.
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Clue time people
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1) $80 billion over ten years is tens of billions of dollars less than could be saved just by getting medicare the same prices that medicaid got.
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2) the $80 billion includes $30 billion in money that isn’t savings at all — its just a discount over the “list price” on brand name drugs that large purchasers (like insurance companies, medicaid, hospitals) don’t pay anyway.
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3) the other $50 billion hasn’t even been spelled out — its just a promise to achieve savings.
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4) Obama made a horrible deal that, had it gone through, would have results in US taxpayers paying tens of billions of dollars more for drugs — and all so he could get the benefit of some headlines saying he’d achieved something.
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This is nobody’s fault but Obama’s…. so stop blaming others.

do you really think its smart for the White House to get the reputation of someone who makes promises and deals to gain political points, and then reneges on those deals at the first opportunity?
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While this reneging on promises has already been established by Obama in terms of his campaign themes and promises made to the public, if these kind of private commitments get broken there will be absolute chaos, becuase no one will believe any commitment that Obama makes about anything (other than his commitment to self-aggrandizement).

do you really think its smart for the White House to get the reputation of someone who makes promises and deals to gain political points, and then reneges on those deals at the first opportunity?

Apparently it bears repeating. Obama can’t deal what’s not his to give. He’s been notably uninvolved with drafting the legislation. Now we finally have some insight as to why…..

“while noting that Jim Messina had also gone on record for the white house regarding the deal.”

It looks like he denied the deal.
From the linked story-

“Alarmed at the reports of the deal, Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who has championed such drug price negotiations, said he had pressed the issue in a private meeting with Jim Messina, a White House deputy chief of staff involved in the talks, and came away reassured that there was no such agreement barring a push for the government negotiation of drug prices.

Mr. Brown said: “I asked them if there was a White House deal. On direct negotiations, they said no.” He added, “I planned no matter what they said to push to continue to try to do that.”

And then then this piece of doublespeak

“But Dan Pfeiffer, a White House spokesman, reconfirmed the deal again Thursday night, suggesting a possible misunderstanding. The senators might have misunderstood reassurances that Congress could still press for drug price negotiations outside of the health care overhaul package, Mr. Pfeiffer said

That is exactly the kind of question that I wish I knew the answer to. I don’t. But I think it is entirely possible that, at some point, the White House and Congress are going to have to consider precisely this kind of calculation (sorry, commenters) with regard to the public option. Note this story in today’s Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080601574.html?sid=ST2009080601616

SG: Please see my reply to the comment above this one. Also, let’s see if I can get a better link to that Washpost story:

http://bit.ly/PnOqs

PD, I don’t understand your point.
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Obama made a huge public fuss about the “$80 billion dollars in savings” he’d gotten from the drug industry. Obama did make a deal, and one has to assume that he’d use the power of the presidency to ensure that the deal was honored in the final legislation.
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It seems to be that the game plan was to exert than influence in secret in congressional backrooms (including the conference committee), and try to leave no fingerprints — instead allowing congresscritters to take the blame for a final bill that was a giveaway to the drug companies.
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This raises a lot of questions about what else the white house had promised the special interests. What, for instance, has he promised the Hospital Association, who he announced a deal with a while back? And what promises has he made to the insurance companies in exchange for their not opposing “no prior condition exclusions”?
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Maybe baucus isn’t the really bad guy here — maybe he’s operating under instructions from the white house with regard to what the White House has negotiated. Why else would Team Obama let someone like Baucus take the lead on “health care reform”, rather than give the job to a reliable liberal ally like Waxman?

homerhk:
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Time and again during the campaign, [Obama] put his faith in the people of the US and surprisingly (to me, at least), they rewarded that faith. Unfortunately, I think that that faith is now being pi**ed on by the public rather than rewarded.
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I’m curious.
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What exactly does that mean?
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Are you saying that, instead of Obama betraying the public by running as the “Change We Can Believe In” candidate, and then once in office pursuing “Change We Believe We Can Get Done By Compromising With Entrenched Interests”, the public has actually betrayed Obama by not understanding well enough just how difficult it is to enact their interests into law and policy?
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Should the sixty-two percent of Americans surveyed on the issue this week supporting their own ability to have some choice in the matter of health insurance have been more cynical about the possibility of Change We Can Believe In, more understanding of just how limited Obama would be when they voted for him?
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In my mind, at least, these three polling points:
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American voters disapprove 52 – 39 percent of the way President Obama is handling health care, down from 46 – 42 percent approval July 1, with 60 – 34 percent disapproval from independent voters.

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and
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Only 21 percent of voters say the plan will improve the quality of care they receive, while 36 percent say it will hurt their quality of care and 39 percent say it will make no difference.

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and
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American voters, by a 55 – 35 percent margin, are more worried that Congress will spend too much money and add to the deficit than it will not act to overhaul the health care system, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. By a similar 57 – 37 percent margin, voters say health care reform should be dropped if it adds “significantly” to the deficit.

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are intimately related.
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One can either look at the polling data and interpret it to mean that Americans are stupid, selfish, provincial, bigoted, proletarian jackasses who aren’t capable of realizing just how “historic” the current reform legislation is, and how hard Barack Obama is working for them by staying out of Congress’ way (except possibly to negotiate savings away during secret meetings with Industry Lords), or one can interpret it to meant that Americans actually know that what’s going on in Washington is business as usual, and aren’t that happy about it.
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(By the way, which one of those interpretations seems like old-school 1970′s institutional liberalism’s view of public policy and politics to you?)
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Try for a moment to remember that the 85 percent of Americans who have been fed up with a terribly insecure system that costs them more and more every year, who overwhelmingly said that “the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt“, and voted for Change Candidate Obama now reasonably believe that the most unpopular, least trusted people in the country –the Congress of the United States and corporate/industry lobbyists– have been deliberately left in charge of the problem by Obama because of political considerations and calculations.
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Try now to put that together with the notion a majority of people also now have that what’s being put together in Congress:
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A) won’t affect them at all
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B) will be expensive, ultimately to them
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C) will probably make economic matters worse (“Voters are split 39 – 41 percent on whether the President’s health care plan will improve or hurt the quality of health care in the nation, with 14 percent saying it won’t make a difference. “)
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Voters who demanded last November a relatively radical departure from the business-as-usual, horse-trading-between-non-public-interests road to ineffective, un-affective policy are now asking themselves “What is this ‘plan’ going to do for me and my family and my community?”
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The President’s answer to that question should be and should always have been:
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“Under this plan, all people will be able to buy affordable comprehensive insurance that guarantees them their trusted doctor, and which cannot be taken away.”

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, like he implied or said outright over and over again during the campaign, but it isn’t.
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How on earth does that add up to the public “pissing on” Obama’s “faith in the people” in your mind, homerhk?
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If nobody –not Obama, not the Congress, no-one– can honestly, simply recite without caveat, without exception, and without legalese or verbal trickery that they will not rest until a plan is enacted in which “All people will be able to buy affordable comprehensive insurance that guarantees them their trusted doctor, and which cannot be taken away.” , then what else, in your opinion, do Americans need to do to “rise up to the challenge he presented“?
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What could you possibly mean by that?

re: the public option…
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for all we know at this point, Obama may have promised the insurance companies that there would be no public option in exchange for their agreeing to the “no pre-existing condition” exemption.
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Obama is clearly backing off of his supposed commitment to the public option, and the question is why he would do so given how politically popular it is — and how it is absolutely essential to achieving any real reduction in overall health care spending in America.
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Obama’s biggest problem is that he’s made that promise about people being able to keep their current insurance politicies. The problem is that people don’t get to decide what policy they have — its the employers who make that decision. And employers don’t want to be forced to continue to offer people the same coverage as costs continue to rise — employers want the option to cut their own costs.
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One way to do that would be to make it possible for businesses to enroll their employees in the public plan. The insurance companies absolutely hate that idea — so if there is a public plan, employers have to be prohibited from making the public plan an option for employees (either directly, or indirectly by providing subsidies to employees who would prefer the public plan.)
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This turns the whole point of a public plan on its head, of course, and the easiest way to deal with the problem that Obama created for himself is simply to get rid of the public plan — and the big question is whether he already “negotiated” that away as part of some other deal he made.

I guess my point is that the WH has plausable deniability if Pharma fails to get what they want.

Independent of whatever may be happening behind closed doors, Obama’s public stance is that he’s standing back and letting Congress do the heavy lifting in drafting the legislation. If somehow the House were to stand firm, Obama’s only actual recourse is to veto the resulting bill. There are Constitutional (if not political) limits to the Power of the Presidency.

I’d like to suggest that there is a way to achieve health care reform –
Divide And Conquer.
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Instead of trying to pass a massive health care reform bill, break it down into its component part — go after the insurance companies first with new laws regarding minimum coverage, no pre-existing conditions, eliminating “medicare advantage” and other regulations. Then go after the drug companies — ending the prohibition on medicare negotiating drug prices, permitting importation of drugs from Canada (and elsewhere), etc.
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After you’ve taken care of those two, then you can go for real reform that provides affordable health care to all americans.
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But trying to provide affordable health care to everyone while at the same time reigning in the health care parasites isn’t working — and the only way that it could ever work is if we had agressive leadership willing to stand up to the parasites and their congressional enablers. We obviously don’t have that kind of leader in the White House, instead we have someone who is more concerned with burnishing his image than with providing care to americans.

if you keep reading, pnnto, you’ll see that Messina was the author of the email that first confirmed the existence of the deal.
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My best guess is that Messina and the White House are trying to use the fact that the White House can’t literally force Congress to abide by the terms of is deal as a means of saying “there was no deal” — at the same time, the White House planned to use every means at its disposal to prevent congress from including money saving provisions that go beyond the (phony) “$80 billion.”
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And it bugs the cr*p out of me that this is probably what Obama would be using the power of the Presidency to achieve….

Stuart, I had a long post drafted and my computer crashed. So here’s the bullet point version:

- I was probably “inartful” in my phrasing (I love that word!)

- I think that what helped Obama in the GE was the passionate support of his supporters. I think those people have let him down as much as he may have let them down.

- bottom line, being President is absolutely tough; you have to be president of the whole country, not just one portion or part of the country.

- I think there is not sufficient recognition of Obama’s achievments and, indeed, the achievment of getting healthcare bills out of four committees within 8 months of inauguration. Rather instead of recognising this, Obama’s supporters are more likely to crow “betrayal” or “bush-lite” at any step that he takes that doesn’t conform to what they wanted.
-the problem with what they wanted is that it doesn’t take into account any political realities, and doesn’t take into account the fact that a significant minority voted for the other guy.
- I am not nor have ever been a supporter of any republican – in the UK I would be somewhat to the left of the labour party, which in the US would make me a communist. But, I also understand that to govern a nation is very different from running a campaign.
- I think Obama’s supporters who cry betrayal are extremely short sighted. As I have said before, Obama wants to have “foot in the door” legislation – you don’t need a whole foot to keep the door open, just the little toe. The “deal” with the phrma people is on point; let’s assume it was made and can’t be broken. It only lasts for 10 years!! It’s absolute peanuts in terms of time compared to how many years the US has left to run. I’m no expert, but I imagine that Medicare, when it was introduced, was but a shell of what it is now in terms of coverage etc.

-Note, i haven’t included the mad republicans in this litany. I expect them to be mad and do anything to stop Obama’s agenda. What Obama needs is the full support of the people who elected him. I’m not talking about blind faith as per W but faith is required nonetheless. It seems to me that he was elected in part because people saw he had the smarts to out-do the Clintons, because he understood the issues and because he was a pretty good tactician. Instead of dissecting every move the guy makes, or second guessing everything he does, let’s step back, and wait for the results and then judge.

Or, by all means, let’s consider his presidency a dead duck 6 months in and give up hope altogether.

I did miss that part about the e-mail.
(Stoopid work distracted me)
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So the same person, Messina, who told Senator Brown that there was no deal confirmed in an e-mail that there is a deal?
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On the same day.
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This is getting confusing.

@Dirks: If somehow the House were to stand firm, Obama’s only actual recourse is to veto the resulting bill.
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Which would not happen, at least for that reason.

homerk: my problem with Obama is that he came in with hefty support. Sure he faced horrendous problems with the economy. But he said, again and again, that he is able to grapple with a number of problems. I believe that. What I see in the HC struggle is no clear direction from the WH to Democrats in the House and the Senate on the road to reorm. Sure the old bulls in both houses behave like “emperors” of their little fiefdoms. But he allowed a lot of freelancing and made such a issue about bipartisanship that the Republicans, with nothing to lose, just played according to their acript.

It’s time to be transparent. What does he he want? How does this reflect the needs of the 75% who want “reform”. People need to know his bottom line. If it is some tinkering here and there, a nod to this outfit or that and a bow to certain senators it won’t wash.

I know it’s 200 days down the road. But he set the August deadline. Now Reid is waffling on the Sept 15 deadline. Can you hear the hollow laughs in Mr SaunaMan’s room?

More than anything this deal is further confirmation of what I have suspected all along: Obama and Rahm (like most D.C. Democrats) are really lousy negotiators.

Basically, they walked over to PhRMA, laid all their cards on the table, admitted that they couldn’t pass anything without PhRMA’s support (which isn’t even true), and begged for PhRMA’s support. I’m sure there was some back-and-forth on the details, but it is clear that PhRMA didn’t give up much.

The sad thing is that I don’t even think Obama and Rahm are in PhRMA’s pocket. Not because I think they are above putting the concerns of key donors above the interests of the country (See Goldman Sachs). I just think they really, really suck at this.

It might be that that 7 point drop in Obama’s popularity is coming from the left as well as from the right.
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I can only say that this stinks…

The poll results will be taken as showing that Americans are against HC reform.

I say the GOP needs to stand by its principles and push for the immediate end to government-run Medicare. I think this could be a real winning platform for them.

I think its kind of ridiculous to say that Obama’s supporters betrayed him. Most of the people who voted for Obama were voting for the illusion that Obama deliberately constructed for himself (i.e. that of an agent of fundamental change). The fact that this illusion required the culpability of the electorate to sustain itself (i.e. voters were not merely duped by Obama, they wanted to be duped by him) doesn’t alter the fact that Obama deliberately and consciously represented himself as something that he never had any intention of being.
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Obama made very specific promises about transparency that lead people to believe that he would follow their individual agenda — the idea being that Obama would function without the “special interests” and “backroom deals”, and consequently advocate the “right” policies, and use his rhetoric gifts to get them passed.
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But that isn’t what Obama has delivered — not by a long shot. Anyone who has been paying attention to what Obama has been doing for the past six months is aware that, in terms of government spending, Obama is as much a creature of special interests as Bush was — the big difference is that Obama is not pushing toxic foreign and domestic policies that are not about spending.
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And millions of Obama voters (as opposed to supporters — the Oborg who bought into the myth and still think that he’s “five moves ahead of everyone else”) are realizing that Obama is not acting in their best interest…. and that’s why his support is declining.

Jamison Foser on the HC polls and the media

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908070003

While admittedly not all of you are sheep, way to go SG — keep up the challenge! And I haven’t read every post so I’m sure you have some company. Too few of the comments I have read so far are challenging KT’s post. What happened to her story she was looking into for the last couple of days about the thugs thwarting the Democratic process. How is it that the media, supposed champions of the first amendment, are ignoring stories about GOP operatives, paid by corporate interests that stand to gain financially from killing reform, are systematically stripping average Americans of their right to free speech?
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Can the media still be as inattentive to the antics of a political movement bent of destroying the Democratic process as apparently the Republicans are? I know they missed lying to go to war in Iraq, lying to promote torture, politicizing the justice department, political prosecutions worthy of the old Chilean government, the secret gathering of intel about journalist (their email trafic) foreign and domestic, lying about no bid contrators that may turn out to be electracuting soldiers, or worse one may be murderers, child sex traffickers, gun runners and ethnic cleansers in the name of Christianity — oh and would this be the same sect of Christianity that is running amok in our armed forces, especially the air force? Or is this the same Christianity sect as the C Street family, whose leadership skills are based on Hitler and Pol Pot? But let’s save Blackwater/Xe and The Family for another day shall we. We wouldn’t want the media to do too much too soon — they are busy trying to take down a president after all.
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KT you and your fellow villagers missed eight years of Republicans malfeasance — and you promised to do better and so far the best you can do is to try to push doubts about the only effort trying to do anything to help the people of this country. Thanks, but with your kind of help who needs opposition. We need the media to report the truth. Not act like sports commentators at a basketball game only showing a highlight wheel of the last two shots, tell us who took the last shot best, but not bothering to tell anyone that the reform team has 500 points on the board, five fresh superstars on the field and their opponents are 450 points behind, only has one player left because the rest fouled out and he has only one trick left up his sleeve (that would be fear).
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You people hung your heads in shame over missing the Bush administration rape of the constitution, and now you commenters go on and on about the need for investigations, yet, KT gets a pass for this crap any body want to guess why? We are so nice and polite to KT for one reason only because she responds. Just like the villagers you come down on regularly, most of you can be bought with access. Amy, you want to stop the vitriolic comments, just answer a commenter or two and they will throw flowers at your feet. So many of you are sitting back and letting Karen Tumulty and the NY Times lead you down this path of distraction as if there’s no history of the media ever doing this before. KT likes to say her position is based on cynicism, that she frames her stories this way because this is the way that health care reform always works out. Did it ever occur to anyone that the reason reform always ends up this way is because the media always acts in the same way? The NY Times, got white water wrong and destroyed the last Democratic president, and it wasn’t until one of their own — was if Harper Collins, Vanity Fair, I forget, did a big expose on how the original NYT’s errors in nexis were consistently repeated, did it ever get revealed that this was a bogus story. I challenge anyone to find very many white water stories printed since that expose. But don’t get too excited because the media doesn’t police themselves very well so don’t look for the big expose on the last eight years or their health care reform antics.
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Now, I realize, it is way too late in the comment cycle to get any answers, and if I was KT I wouldn’t want to answer anyway. But for history’s sake I don’t want it said KT, that there was nothing you could do, in the same way you disclaim having anything to do with the Gore defamation. If health reform fails, you very much helped to kill it. You helped when you aided in the destruction of Daschle and feigned innocence. You helped with your consistent framing that the reform sky is falling. You helped last week when you let CNN use you as a foil for their phony tax story and now you are carrying water for the NY Times to feed this ridiculous secret plot to help big pharma. As if 1993 never happened and the smartest move in this process wouldn’t be to get pharma not to go all out against the kind of reform they successfully killed last time.

The GOP created a sweetheart deal for big pharma in the Medicare prescription drug legislation, so what Obama makes a deal to keep them out of the debate, gets that money that Bush gave them back, closes the doughnut hole that’s killing seniors and he’s the bad guy? Meanwhile I don’t hear squat from you about how the guy who tried to make another employee lie to Congress, a crime I might add, about the cost of the Medicare program has now teamed up with the industry he helped get that sweetheart deal, and is now in cahoots with the guy who was fined $1.8 billion dollars for defrauding health care and is now behind the thuggery trying to kill reform. Did it ever occur to anyone over at the NY Times or at Time Magazine that the reason big pharma is talking about a secret deal now is because when they made a d eal they were trying to lose less and now they smell blood in the water thanks to the media and want to back out of the deal and join the side now trying to kill health care reform?
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Now I will continue to discount everything plukasiak says because his only motive is to kick Obama, as if Hillary would have done any different or any better — please, she had her shot at health care and it bombed. Now the media is trying to help the GOP get back on its feet in the name of balance, you can do that, but you don’t get to act like you aren’t involved in doing that this time.
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Of course, it’s not appropriate to call KT out on her village like tendencies because she responds to the commenters. How many times do you people beyatch and moan because the villagers will do anything in the name of access? Well tell me how is their behavior any different than the deference given to KT because of the access she allows you’ll to have with her. Please this time around she is leading the charge that’s killing health care. She calls it cynicism, perhaps she should call it naiveté, if she thinks she is doing anybody a good service with her chicken little everything is falling apart style of reporting.
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KT — on this issue you are a fraud! You can hold all the debates on health care you want, but if in the end you cover the story using the same narrative frame as the rest of the village you are no different and should be treated as such. I don’t care how much access you allow, for the last eight years the media has been too scared to go after the GOP and now you think its safe to go back to gotcha journalism because its a Democrat in office. In the mean time, GOP thugs are shutting down democracy from 1726 M Street. Where’s you’re reporting on that. — No the thing that’s going to kill health care reform is a deal to close the Medicare doughnut hole that’s killing seniors and keep the big gun out of the opposition game long enough to get momentum before the media starts shooting it down.
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Everybody talks about the August deadline was about Democrats getting shaky when they go home to their districts. Here’s a dot no one has connected yet, perhaps the people in the administration were really worried about a media with too much time on its hands — everyone knows they are most destructive in the summer when they’re bored.
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Times headline: Who killed health care reform? The media, leading the sheep in the blogosphere.

Oops, I posted this in the wrong placce.
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While admittedly not all of you are sheep, way to go SG — keep up the challenge! And I haven’t read every post so I’m sure you have some company. Too few of the comments I have read so far are challenging KT’s post. What happened to her story she was looking into for the last couple of days about the thugs thwarting the Democratic process. How is it that the media, supposed champions of the first amendment, are ignoring stories about GOP operatives, paid by corporate interests that stand to gain financially from killing reform, are systematically stripping average Americans of their right to free speech?
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Can the media still be as inattentive to the antics of a political movement bent of destroying the Democratic process as apparently the Republicans are? I know they missed lying to go to war in Iraq, lying to promote torture, politicizing the justice department, political prosecutions worthy of the old Chilean government, the secret gathering of intel about journalist (their email trafic) foreign and domestic, lying about no bid contrators that may turn out to be electracuting soldiers, or worse one may be murderers, child sex traffickers, gun runners and ethnic cleansers in the name of Christianity — oh and would this be the same sect of Christianity that is running amok in our armed forces, especially the air force? Or is this the same Christianity sect as the C Street family, whose leadership skills are based on Hitler and Pol Pot? But let’s save Blackwater/Xe and The Family for another day shall we. We wouldn’t want the media to do too much too soon — they are busy trying to take down a president after all.
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KT you and your fellow villagers missed eight years of Republicans malfeasance — and you promised to do better and so far the best you can do is to try to push doubts about the only effort trying to do anything to help the people of this country. Thanks, but with your kind of help who needs opposition. We need the media to report the truth. Not act like sports commentators at a basketball game only showing a highlight wheel of the last two shots, tell us who took the last shot best, but not bothering to tell anyone that the reform team has 500 points on the board, five fresh superstars on the field and their opponents are 450 points behind, only has one player left because the rest fouled out and he has only one trick left up his sleeve (that would be fear).
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You people hung your heads in shame over missing the Bush administration rape of the constitution, and now you commenters go on and on about the need for investigations, yet, KT gets a pass for this crap any body want to guess why? We are so nice and polite to KT for one reason only because she responds. Just like the villagers you come down on regularly, most of you can be bought with access. Amy, you want to stop the vitriolic comments, just answer a commenter or two and they will throw flowers at your feet. So many of you are sitting back and letting Karen Tumulty and the NY Times lead you down this path of distraction as if there’s no history of the media ever doing this before. KT likes to say her position is based on cynicism, that she frames her stories this way because this is the way that health care reform always works out. Did it ever occur to anyone that the reason reform always ends up this way is because the media always acts in the same way? The NY Times, got white water wrong and destroyed the last Democratic president, and it wasn’t until one of their own — was if Harper Collins, Vanity Fair, I forget, did a big expose on how the original NYT’s errors in nexis were consistently repeated, did it ever get revealed that this was a bogus story. I challenge anyone to find very many white water stories printed since that expose. But don’t get too excited because the media doesn’t police themselves very well so don’t look for the big expose on the last eight years or their health care reform antics.
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Now, I realize, it is way too late in the comment cycle to get any answers, and if I was KT I wouldn’t want to answer anyway. But for history’s sake I don’t want it said KT, that there was nothing you could do, in the same way you disclaim having anything to do with the Gore defamation. If health reform fails, you very much helped to kill it. You helped when you aided in the destruction of Daschle and feigned innocence. You helped with your consistent framing that the reform sky is falling. You helped last week when you let CNN use you as a foil for their phony tax story and now you are carrying water for the NY Times to feed this ridiculous secret plot to help big pharma. As if 1993 never happened and the smartest move in this process wouldn’t be to get pharma not to go all out against the kind of reform they successfully killed last time.

The GOP created a sweetheart deal for big pharma in the Medicare prescription drug legislation, so what Obama makes a deal to keep them out of the debate, gets that money that Bush gave them back, closes the doughnut hole that’s killing seniors and he’s the bad guy? Meanwhile I don’t hear squat from you about how the guy who tried to make another employee lie to Congress, a crime I might add, about the cost of the Medicare program has now teamed up with the industry he helped get that sweetheart deal, and is now in cahoots with the guy who was fined $1.8 billion dollars for defrauding health care and is now behind the thuggery trying to kill reform. Did it ever occur to anyone over at the NY Times or at Time Magazine that the reason big pharma is talking about a secret deal now is because when they made a d eal they were trying to lose less and now they smell blood in the water thanks to the media and want to back out of the deal and join the side now trying to kill health care reform?
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Now I will continue to discount everything plukasiak says because his only motive is to kick Obama, as if Hillary would have done any different or any better — please, she had her shot at health care and it bombed. Now the media is trying to help the GOP get back on its feet in the name of balance, you can do that, but you don’t get to act like you aren’t involved in doing that this time.
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Of course, it’s not appropriate to call KT out on her village like tendencies because she responds to the commenters. How many times do you people beyatch and moan because the villagers will do anything in the name of access? Well tell me how is their behavior any different than the deference given to KT because of the access she allows you’ll to have with her. Please this time around she is leading the charge that’s killing health care. She calls it cynicism, perhaps she should call it naiveté, if she thinks she is doing anybody a good service with her chicken little everything is falling apart style of reporting.
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KT — on this issue you are a fraud! You can hold all the debates on health care you want, but if in the end you cover the story using the same narrative frame as the rest of the village you are no different and should be treated as such. I don’t care how much access you allow, for the last eight years the media has been too scared to go after the GOP and now you think its safe to go back to gotcha journalism because its a Democrat in office. In the mean time, GOP thugs are shutting down democracy from 1726 M Street. Where’s you’re reporting on that. — No the thing that’s going to kill health care reform is a deal to close the Medicare doughnut hole that’s killing seniors and keep the big gun out of the opposition game long enough to get momentum before the media starts shooting it down.
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Everybody talks about the August deadline was about Democrats getting shaky when they go home to their districts. Here’s a dot no one has connected yet, perhaps the people in the administration were really worried about a media with too much time on its hands — everyone knows they are most destructive in the summer when they’re bored.
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Times headline: Who killed health care reform? The media, leading the sheep in the blogosphere.

Let’s see now, you, Tim Noah and Billy Tauzin think there was a deal that got Big Pharma to back (rather than oppose) the reform and The White House now says that there’s no deal. So who got taken again?

homerhk:
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Thanks so much for the response.
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I had a long post drafted and my computer crashed.
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As you can imagine (“long post”), I strongly empathize.
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I think Obama’s supporters who cry betrayal are extremely short sighted. As I have said before, Obama wants to have “foot in the door” legislation – you don’t need a whole foot to keep the door open, just the little toe.
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Since I’m not here for the sake of polemics, I’ll let this smart, passionate guy named Barack Hussein Obama answer that point:

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: A Change We Can Believe In
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Spartanburg, SC | November 03, 2007
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…this is also a moment of great promise. It’s a chance to turn the page by offering the American people a fundamentally different choice in 2008 – not just in the policies we offer, but in the kind of leadership we offer. It’s a chance to come together and finally solve the challenges that were made worse by George Bush, but existed long before he took office – challenges like health care and energy and education that we haven’t met for decades because of a political system in Washington that has failed the American people.
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And that’s what this debate in our party right now is all about.
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…[business as usual politics ] encourages vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment, instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America. It teaches you that you can promise progress for everyday people while striking a bargain with the very special interests who crowd them out.
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One year from now, we have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over.
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Because real change isn’t another four years of defending lobbyists who don’t represent real Americans – it’s standing with working Americans who have seen their jobs disappear and their wages decline and their hope for the future slip further and further away. That’s the change we can offer in 2008.
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That’s how I’ll pass a universal health care bill that allows every American to get the same kind of health care that members of Congress get for themselves and cuts every family’s premiums by up to $2500. And mark my words – I will sign this bill by the end of my first term as President. That’s the change we can offer in 2008.
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America, our moment is now. Now is our chance to turn the page. Now is our chance to write a new chapter.
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I’m running because I don’t want to wake up one morning four years from now, and turn on one of those cable talk shows, and see that Washington is still stuck in the same food fight it’s been in for over a decade. I don’t want to see that more Americans lost their health care and fell into bankruptcy because we let the insurance industry spend millions to stop us for yet another year. I don’t want to see that.
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That is the change that’s possible in this election. That is the moment I want to seize as President. And I ask you all to join me in this journey. Thank you.

At the risk of sounding argumentative, homerhk, when you say:
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the problem with what they [his supporters...those people {who} have let him down as much as he may have let them down] wanted is that it doesn’t take into account any political realities, and doesn’t take into account the fact that a significant minority voted for the other guy.
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, it seems as if you’re essentially asserting

“He said those great things to get elected; everybody should have understood that they weren’t ever going to witness real change. When he said that he wouldn’t “promise progress for everyday people while striking a bargain with the very special interests who crowd them out”, he really meant that he would do that very thing, but he might get some beneficial results for some people out of that un-representative and dishonest process, so therefore we should be satisfied with whatever we get.“.

That may be true, but also maybe it’s part of what’s fundamentally wrong with our nation and our politics. In a democracy, we’re supposed to let our temporary elected public servants know when things like that are f*cked up. We’re supposed to say things like “Hey! Don’t do that!” and “Hey! Do what you promised!” and “Hey! This is what we think is wrong with your policies/politics; please change them now, or you will not continue to enjoy our support“.
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It seems to me that framing the discussion purely in terms of support vs opposition (“faith” and “full support” vs “let him down” and “crow[ing] betrayal” and “second guessing everything he does”, you’re basically saying “You elected this guy, and now your job is to trust your leader, so back off and don’t take any chances of harming him politically by complaining too loudly.“, and that the behavior endorsed by this sentiment is exactly the opposite of what should be expected from a healthy, engaged, informed polity in a functioning representative democracy.
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Or, by all means, let’s consider his presidency a dead duck 6 months in and give up hope altogether.
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Doesn’t that seem like a tremendously disingenuous false choice to you, right on up there with others “Or, by all means, let’s declare defeat and run away from our responsibilities in Iraq, leaving genocide and regional war, and entering a new era of American humiliation.“, homerhk? Doesn’t that sound like bad rhetoric, meant to shrink the debate? Doesn’t it sound kinda like you’re accusing dissenters of rooting for failure by killing “hope” and “giving up”?
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Or when Barack Obama said

We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.

, do you really believe that he meant “…until I’m finally in the White House and in the middle of a political fight over health insurance reform“, homerhk?
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Thanks so much for reading and considering this.

Dee: this is a story about the actual substance of what will (and will not) be in the bill and why. if you do not think it is important, then you and I have very different ideas of what is important.

If I understand her, what she thinks is important is media speculation about “the actual substance of what will (and will not) be in the bill” that is not helpful to the public understanding what ought to be in any reform legislation and why. I agree.

Shepherd: The White House did a deal with PhRMA. This has been confirmed to me (and to other reporters) by high-level sources in the White House. A Deputy Chief of Staff confirmed that on the record. This is a deal that could have a real effect on real people’s lives. Democrats on the Hill are furious about it. They have said this publicly. That meets my definition of a story.

Jonathan Cohn wonders who else got deals. Now that PhRMA has gone public with theirs, I suspect we may be finding out.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/06/a-sweetheart-deal-for-pharma-and-who-else.aspx

So, if Congress writes more Rx savings into the legislation and the White House goes along, was there still “a deal”? I mean, you’d have to be a pretty big fool to count on a behind-closed-doors 10-year “deal” with something as untrustworthy as Big Pharma and I don’t think Obama’s mother raised her no fool.

There was a deal, one that goes counter to one of Obama’s campaign promises. Congress may not go along (though I suspect they will, given that the Finance Committee bill is likely to look at lot like the deal). But that does not change the fact that there was a deal. And while the White House is not technically a party to the conference committee, it nonetheless has some influence on what comes out of it. I’m not saying that all of this might not be smart politics, and work in the interest of ultimately getting a good bill through. But there was a deal. And it was an important one that will have an impact on the lives of millions of Americans.

who got taken?
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well, you did for one. You actually believed that Obama could be trusted. The only reason that the deal might not be fulfilled is that, contrary to Obama’s plans, the backroom promises have been exposed.
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The only question now is whether Obama’s new best friend Tauzin continues to insist that Obama do whatever he can to hold up his end of the deal, or if Tauzin decides that exposing Obama’s sweetheart arrangement with PhRMA has rendered it impossible to fulfill — and that with Congress shutting off the flow of taxpayer dollars to subsidize Tauzin’s $2,000,000 salary, the drug companies will join the rest of the parasites in opposing Obama’s faux “reform” bill.

How so? I don’t have a f@cking clue what “deals” are going to be “honored” in any legislation that comes out of this farcical process and neither do you or Karen, or anyone else for that matter.

Dee, alas, I’ve thrown flowers at KT and Amy and have received no responses in return. Oh well, I’ll sorta keep trying *sigh*. Digging for inside stuff and secret deals is crucial and this story is clearly needed and a great effort today by KT (more flowers). I’ve been disappointed with passive corporate media coverage in general, again (here we go) pointing to Enron coverage. Biz media kept repeating Enron TP’s and earnings #’s, not asking how ENE got there. Bethany McLean instead interviewed a short seller / critic (Jim Chanos) and from there started at square one / began digging. She asked first how ENE really made its money. Others didn’t. I haven’t given up on KT or other swampers (more flowers), but definitely you, pirate, and others need to keep up the pressure. I’m good at levity but not at delivering pressure. Thanks.

Dee: being polite to KT should not camouflage the fact that quite a few posters here have raised questions about the WH strategy, or lack thereof. I have very serious questions about the WH’s leadership on this issue – or lack of it – and I find this blog a useful place to lay this out.

Rick Sanchez did a good job on CNN showing up the tactics, lies and distortions of the opponents, I don’t bother with CNN but saw a replay at TPM.

I don’t see much point in complaining about the thuggery at the townhalls. I am surprised at the lack of prep by Democrats who knew this was coming. They appear to be walking into this with open eyes and leaving their brains at the door. They don’t seem to have an appetite for this kind of confrontation. The Brooks Brothers crowd left their sense of shame and decorum at the door. Why bother with the facts when lies dribble out so easily from their mouths.

The battle is also up to us.

So, Shepherd, is your argument here that these deals should not be reported? That when reporters find out about them, that they should ignore them, or just wait for the process to play itself out?

Not at all. That’s news. Assuming what was the nature of “the deal” or that it’s a done deal, when we have no way of knowing much of anything that transpired behind closed doors – e.g., did Obama’s team use language that could be open to interpretation – is speculation.

SG:“…Thanks, but I won’t be here long. Just contributing until it turns into a troll fest yet again.”
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I’ve tried to get the Swamp to embrace “No Feeding Thursdays”, but old habits die hard. Any other suggestions?

“It was a very good one for PhRMA that would break a campaign promise that Barack Obama made when he was running for President, and it represents precisely the kind of politics that Rahm Emanuel used to decry when he was in Congress and the Republicans were doing it.”

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Highly speculative, political and unhelpful.

KT….
Don’t change a thing. You’ve been doing important work and if you weren’t doing it, it wouldn’t be getting done.

Did you read my story? It includes quotes from Rahm as a congressman criticizing Republicans for precisely this arrangement with the pharmaceutical industry.

and the Noah piece has a link to Obama’s campaign promise to get rid of the prohibition on direct negotiation. These are facts.

Thanks KT for responding. This is where I think benefit of the doubt comes into it. One can’t definitely call this a terrible deal, when considering all the moving parts of healthcare reform (and the politics associated with it). In this case, given that you all have given your trust in Obama that he knows what he is doing, why don’t we sit back and see what happens before coming down on him like a ton of bricks.

And when I say “trust” I mean trust that he has (along with his myriad of advisors) thought through the best way to achieve what he wants to achieve and that he is following through his plan despite the noise, just as he did consistently through the campaign.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that anyone should stop pushing for their favoured reform, but all this talk of betrayal, doom and gloom that the reform that will pass won’t be worth anything is premature and detrimental to the overall efforts.

Stuart,
I can’t really disagree with anything you are saying except for timing. Give him time. Along with those amazing things he said, and which I grant you got him elected (at the very least accounted for the incredible passion of his supporters) he also said, many many times, that change doesn’t happen over night. It takes time and there are steps along the way. Whatever he is or isn’t Obama has always been a long term guy, meaning 10, 20 years down the road. This is not “History will judge me” Bush style. With Bush, I just cannot see that history will ever forget the lies that got you and my country into war, even if Iraq becomes a shining beacon for democracy – as if! With Obama, however, I can see that 20 years down the line when the initial steps of Obama healthcare and climate change legislation have reached their destination, that legislation will be seen as the difficult, vital and critical first step.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Of course I read your (and Noah’s) piece.

OK then, Obama made a secret deal with big Pharma that will definitely be ensconced in US law by Congress, exactly as agreed to behind closed doors and will screw the public out of $billions it could have saved through some other measures that were prevented by the deal and all that constitutes a giant FU to the public based on previous condemnations of secret sweetheart deals with industry that screwed the public. Happy?
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I could just as easily speculate that Obama punked pharma to prevent them from getting on the Big Lie bandwagon and isolate the insurance industry as it’s main opponent, making any deal secretly heard by Pharma no “deal” at all. We just don’t know.

Okay. So I’m wrong for thinking that there is something wrong with focusing all the attention on a narrative that Obama’s is breaking a campaign by wheeling and dealing to get health care reform. But it’s not a problem that this narrative provides no context about the sweetheart deal pharma has currently and no context about how much the reform opposition landscape has changed because of keeping them from joining the opposition. Oh yeah right KT, you can’t talk about that because then the sky is falling meme would be exposed as a hoax.
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The bottom line is that after eight years of missing every substanitive attempt at an undercover authoritarian coup, complete with a VP advocating to use the military on our streets in place of police, your idea of being a watchdog is to ignore their continued assault on Democracy because it’s more important to show that in keeping his promise to reform health care this year and getting closer to that goal than any previous administration in history, he didn’t stick to the funding proposal written by a sympathetic think tank he pointed to during the heat of the campaign to prove his way was doable. Was this back when your own reporting showed him not having a clear plan and scrambling to prove credibility? Alrighty then forgive me for thinking this rationale is stupid enough to be worthy of Dubya himself.
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May be I missed it but where are all the calls for that post about the town halls? Oh you need inside access?
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Americans prosperity patients first care yada yada yada what ever they call themselves take industry money, corporate money. They are located at 1726 M St. That’s the tall building with the green awning on the otherside of the garage from the league of women voters and WABC. I’m pretty sure they are listed in the directory.

shepard — there is no speculation here. both the white house and Tauzin have confirmed that the deal was for $80 billion in “savings” AND NO MORE — that Medicare drug prices would not be subject to negotiation, that drugs would not be allowed to be imported from Canada, period.
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And the deal was that the White House would use its considerable influence to keep up its end of the bargain.
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Now, what is speculation is why this deal became public. IMHO, its became public because the House progressive caucus balked at the “blue dog compromise”, and Waxman was able to resolve the problem by getting additional “savings” from the drug companies (specifically, making drug prices negotiable.) Tauzin realized that the deal was in extremely deep trouble because of PAYGO pressures, but since he’d told the people paying his $2,000,000 salary that he had a rock-solid deal, he had to get the White House to admit it on paper to keep his job.
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But reporting on the NATURE of the deal — what Obama promised, and what he was getting in exchange, is not speculation, its reporting on the facts.

“the sky is falling meme”
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It has struck me that almost every (all?) HC posts have been of the heres-another-problem variety.
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Please don’t twist that into “all you want is happy news” it is just striking how little positive news there has been about this whole process.

Okay. So I’m wrong for thinking that there is something wrong with focusing all the attention on a narrative that Obama’s is breaking a campaign by wheeling and dealing to get health care reform. But it’s not a problem that this narrative provides no context (1) about the sweetheart deal pharma has currently and no context about how much the reform opposition landscape has changed (2)because of keeping them from joining the opposition.
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1) if you bothered to read the links, the nature of the current “sweetheart deal” is readily apparent.
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2) Obama sold us out to the drug companies long before the “change in the opposition landscape”. He sold us out pre-emptively, in fact.
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indeed, I think you realize all of this, and are in denial about precisely how badly you’ve been betrayed by Obama. Your comments have been ridiculously long, unfocussed, and thoughly off-topic — you’re desperate to change the subject, rather than focus on what this story tells us about Obama and how he’s turning out to be even more of a fraud than people like me imagined.

That’s because this is very, very hard stuff to get done. If it were easy, it would have been done decades ago. I have noted in numerous stories that Obama has moved this ball closer to the goal line than anyone else, but he would be the first to concede (in fact, he did. hey! did i mention i had an interview?) that this is very tough going.

its true that the media has consistently advanced the “health care reform is in trouble” narrative at every opportunity (one example, when the AMA opposed a ‘public option’, it was a huge story….when it came on board with the ‘public option’, it was barely covered). And the media has consistently promoted dubious (and often completely false) critiques of reform from GOP ideologues — and the media knew full well exactly what they were doing, since they already reported on how those talking points were developed by people like Frank Luntz based on polling that was done before there was any concrete proposal.
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But the media has also consistently promoted stories and approaches advanced by the White House (such as the deals with PhRMA and the Hospital Assn), and the idealization of Mayo and Kaiser Permanente and deeply flawed studies like those of the Dartmouth group (all of which are designed to suggest that substantial savings are available if we just ‘tweak’ the system) — narratives that are just as phony and deceptive as what the GOP has been putting out.
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Ultimately, the media is doing what the media always does — letting those in power set the agenda, and more importantly, set the limits of the discussion on that agenda. And that’s why all the news has been “bad” — its all based on two variations of the same false narrative.

The bottom line is that after eight years…
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I appreciate your frustration, Dee, there’s a lot that could be said about a lot.
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But, no, the bottom line is that we need to make our voices heard right now so that Obama and Democrats in Congress know that they’ll pay a price in the next election if they f*ck health insurance reform up again, because electoral defeat is precisely what’s being threatened by our powerful opponents.
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The slightest hint of Obama negotiating away our interests in the matter of passing the next Social Security program should be met with instant, pandemic outrage, so that Rahm & Co. know with death-and-taxes certainty that they should be less afraid of Republicans and lobbyists and more afraid of people when health care push comes to shove (now).

KT, great post. Almost no one actually likes this kind of story because Obama’s critics on the right want to ignore the problematic influence of big business on health care, and many of his supporters clearly don’t want to hear about Obama doing the kind of thing he so eloquently criticized during his campaign. But it’s important so thanks for covering this.

To people who are still trying to defend on Obama on this, you may be right. But countering criticisms based on empirical evidence – the solid reports of the deal and his campaign promises – with vague appeals to what will happen in the future, or Obama’s cleverness, or his good intentions is not argumentation. It’s denial.

The truth may be that this is the best he can do. The truth may be he was wrong about promising to not practice the Washington-as-usual politics of secret backroom deals with special interest groups. And the truth may be that he needed to lie and promise that in order to win, and at least in the GE I think most of us can agree that lies were a good price to pay for defeating McCain-Palin. But none of this is consistent with claiming that Obama is handling health care reform in the manner he promised to.

When this was announced my impression was that this was the deal. I was very disappointed that it did not include the ability to do what the VA does with drugs.
I was suprised that there was not any outrage at this.

I am having trouble to see what was kept secret.

Read this just prior to hitting the futon last night, and I have the same reaction this morning:

Obama’s like a spouse who’s been acting vague and suspicious for months, the whiff of perfume, a hotel receipt … now we have basic confirmation that he’s cheating on us, and yet, by some folks’ logic, it’s the betrayed spouse who should be condemned for not trusting him (not satisfying him?)

“I thought how odd it was we all have this need for the great man, and create him over and over again in the face of all the evidence”

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

That’s point. it wasn’t a secret. They had a big freakin media event announcing the $80 billion give back — helping to close the doughnut hole. AARP was there for the signing. But the media needs something else to focus on so they can continue to ignore the biggest threat to democracy since Cheney left office — you did notice how little they reported on his antics at the time, no matter how much the blogs were screaming about them.

And sorry Rose, but I think you got it all wrong. We had a huge flame throwing fight you and I, back when Daschle was getting the old heave ho. I said then that the media attack on Daschle was just the first salvo to knock Obama down so health care could be defeated
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You and other said oh no — I was crazy and I couldn’t possibly know what was going to happen and that getting rid of Daschle was going to be good for the reform process. Now a couple of months later it doesn’t sound so crazy does it?
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The media is painting health care reform as on its knees and Obama is the skank that you sold you’ll out. Mean while, the stauts quo goes on and the media lives to write about the fight for another day. It is just not in their self-interest for this town to be fixed. Don’t you get it, they sell more, ratings go up when people tune to trouble — period. This is a corporate media. You rail on CNN but think Time is immune? their owned by the same parent company. What other reason would it be that KT let Jessica put that phony tax story in her mouth?
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I’ve been at this game along time and every body’s got their part to play and rather than you think I’m trying to say I’m special I’ve got ESP. — try they are as predictable as a box of crayola eight crayons. Just color the media in and know that their job is to instigate fights so they can cover the adversarial interaction. When the opposition is weak, knock down the winner so we can keep it going. If we can’t knock down the winner, build up his opponent so he can live to fight an other day — end of story.

Stuart you hold on to your innocence it is sweet. I’ve spent too much time in the trenches not to know better. They say war is politics by other means, but I say politics is war by other means. We’re at war and right now the other side is getting help from the peace keepers.

Sorry Jcapan –
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But a lot of this is what happens when realists have to explain the facts of life of what we’re really up against to a bunch of folks still believing in unicorns. You want to rail against Obama because he is not progressive enough, he never was but nobody bothered to listen to what he was saying only what they wanted to hear. If this country could elect a progressive, don’t you think they would have by now? For the first time in decades we have elected someone who has consistently set out an agenda top do exactly what he promised. Anyone who believes that you can get what you want in politics without negotiating is either naive or a fool. Even Regan had to compromise on his tax cut — that’s just not the part they talk al lot about in the revised version. In fact, he didn’t get anything done after the first two years, of course they don’t mention that in the revised version either.

“But reporting on the NATURE of the deal — what Obama promised, and what he was getting in exchange, is not speculation, its reporting on the facts.”
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Let’s me see if I can explain this so that even the bile-filled can understand. “The deal” only matters if it actually happens. At the moment, The White House is telling Congress to go ahead with negotiations that would appear to negate “the deal”. And if “the deal” doesn’t happen then there’s no screwing the public on either the promise not to strike secret deals or the effort to reduce cost.
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Look, Obama has clearly broken campaign promises on government spying and transparency (and lost my financial support as a result) so I’m not being Pollyanna here. So far, “the deal” could simply be very clever politics, like the “efforts at bi-partisanship” on the stimulus and budget – that Obama knew Republicans would never support – as well as the “efforts at bipartisanship” on crafting health care legislation – that everyone knows Republicans will never support. And if Obama had to convince journalists that there was “a deal” to convince big Pharma to go along, I’d consider that shrewd politics.
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If the final legislation indeed prevents anyone from ever going back to reduce RX costs in the future, I’ll assume you and Karen are absolutely correct about “the deal”. Until that happens, I have to assume you don’t know sh!t.