Obama’s health care meeting lives up to a previously broken promise to conduct talks openly
By APThursday, February 25, 2010
Health meeting is a promise kept _ for a day
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s televised health care meeting with lawmakers Thursday fulfilled a promise he broke before he kept. Now Obama has made good on the pledge — at least for one day.
Several times in the 2008 campaign, Obama vowed to hold open negotiations in reworking health care. But once in office, Democrats in the White House and Congress conducted negotiations as usual, making multibillion-dollar deals with hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, other special interests — and each other — in private.
“I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table,” Obama told voters in Chester, Va., in August 2008. “What we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”
Enter the big table, C-SPAN and other networks Thursday. Obama brought Democratic and Republican lawmakers together for a daylong conference at Blair House across from the White House, with everyone invited to watch.
So far, though, there is no indication Obama or the congressional Democrats have turned a new leaf and will begin having “all the negotiations” open.
Tags: Barack Obama, Geography, Government Regulations, Industry Regulation, North America, Summits, United States, Washington
