Robert Gibbs Says No Looking Back on Secret Health Care Meetings

Last week’s health care summit was largely the result of outrage over the lack of promised transparency in health care reform. While that criticism focused on conference negotiations over the health care bill, the true failure of transparency occurred in the spring and summer of 2009, as the White House met with leaders from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. I asked Robert Gibbs about it Friday. Listen carefully to what I asked, and to his response:

Transcript: (emphasis mine)

TC:    And, secondly, the President now admits that on health care the White House fell somewhat short on transparency. Now, I’m wondering if the White House would be willing to go back and rectify that and make available transcripts, tapes, documentation from the meetings that took place in the spring and the summer with the pharmaceutical lobby and the — health care.

MR. GIBBS: There are not tapes of any meetings. I think that ended about the mid-70s. There are not tapes or transcripts of —

TC:    Minutes?

MR. GIBBS: — of meetings. There’s not a stenographer in these — in these events.

See how my question was broad, and Gibbs narrowed it to “tapes or transcripts?”

Anyone who has followed this story closely knows that there was at least one memo produced at these meetings. The White House and PhRMA denied the memo’s authenticity, but the third party at those meetings, the Senate Finance Committee, stonewalled me on the question, even issuing orders to staff to do so.

While there may not be tapes or transcripts of those meetings, it seems impossible that there’s no documentation at all of what went on at them, which is probably why Gibbs didn’t actually say that. The point here is that the White House has no burning desire to remedy the issue.

It’s also unlikely that some groundswell of public pressure will force them to do so. As I said before, the focus for criticism has been lack of transparency in conference negotiations, which is idiotic. TV cameras or not, all of that comes out in the wash. Everyone knows who got a Medicare Advantage carve-out, or $300 million in Medicaid funding.

But thanks to these secret meetings, we will never know what went into these (well-intentioned or not, wise or unwise) deals with the devil.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.