The WaPo just doesn’t get it, I guess. Just days after it was revealed that Ceci Connolly was the "Play" in the WaPo’s Pay2Play dinners, she’s out with an article based in significant part on quotes from those invited to the Pay2Play dinner.

There’s Nancy-Ann DeParle, who was invited to the dinner.

Early on, Obama and health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle discussed the parallels with Johnson and creation of the health program that serves 45 million seniors and people with disabilities today. Just as Johnson gave legendary lawmaker Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.) latitude to craft the Medicare bill, Obama has asked Congress to write the health-care revamp legislation. 

[snip]

In private meetings or phone calls with legislators, Obama "has an easy familiarity," said DeParle, who often joins the sessions. "He has a way of getting right to the heart of the matter. He’s pushing and prodding and giving no ground."

When the president leans back in his chair, flashing a broad smile, "he is very persuasive," she said. After he listens to lawmakers’ concerns, he often replies: "There’s no reason to delay."

As a reminder of the blueprint they have settled on, DeParle keeps a Johnson quotation under glass on her desk, just above the keyboard. It reads: "There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption."

There’s Olympia Snowe, who was invited to the dinner.

Obama has lavished attention on moderate GOP senators such as Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), who provide the seal of bipartisanship he covets. His message to Snowe, like many others, is that "this is his highest domestic priority, and he wants to get it accomplished and done this year," she said. "I indicated to him it was important to be flexible on the time frame and on trying to draft the substance of legislative policy."

Snowe and Rockefeller praised Obama for his deference to the legislative branch, but both signaled he may soon have to wade into the messier details of the bill.

"At some point, the president’s going to have to play a pivotal role in shaping what happens," Snowe said. "It is crucial."

And who knows whether Jim Cooper–who had already accepted the invitation to the dinner–is who Ceci bases this assertion on.

On Capitol Hill, conservative House Democrats are pushing back against a graduated surtax on incomes exceeding $350,000 a year, saying the plan would unduly increase the highest marginal tax rate. Many senators expressed a distaste for any tax increase for the wealthy. 

It sort of makes you wonder whether Max Baucus, Jello Jay, and Diane DeGette–the other Dems cited in the article–feel gypped that they didn’t get their invite to Katharine Weymouth’s house.

And of course, Ceci’s going to include the Third Way; any bets that Jim Kessler had Weymouth’s soiree penciled into his calendar?

"Behind closed doors, he essentially says: If this sinks, we will have trouble in 2010," said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at the moderate Third Way think tank. "If this goes down, they will lose a whole lot of momentum on everything else. Clinton’s whole agenda went down" after the reform’s defeat.  

Mind you, I want Obama to succeed with health care reform. But this kind of puff piece probably doesn’t help–it certainly takes the news value of the article and tarnishes its value. 

And just as importantly, by relying on several of the people invited to the Pay2Play dinner, this puff piece shows, once again, that the dinner was about selling Ceci Connolly and her little network of conservative Hill friends. A pity for Kaiser Permanente (the planned sponsor); they too could have been part of this beautiful pageant.

When Dan Froomkin described on Tuesday why the oldtimers at the WaPo had him fired, he spoke a lot about the Holy Grail of the impartial center. Granted, Froomkin described the now-departed Len Downie as that cult’s High Priest. Nevertheless, it sounds like that "impartial center" can be bought for $25,000 to $250,000 a shot.

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

Now, Mike Allen skewers his former employer, the WaPo, pretty seriously (and deservedly) for this.

"Washington Post Salons are extensions of The Washington Post brand of journalistic inquiry into the issues, a unique opportunity for stakeholders to hear and be heard," the flier says. "At the core is a critical topic of our day. Dinner and a volley of ideas unfold in an evening of intelligent, news-driven and off-the-record conversation. … By bringing together those powerful few in business and policy-making who are forwarding, legislating and reporting on the issues, Washington Post Salons give life to the debate. Be at this nexus of business and policy with your underwriting of Washington Post Salons."

But I want to know about the other side of the equation. Which members of Congress and the Administration have agreed to participate? Did they know of the payoffs the lobbyists will make to host the events? And did the politicians expect anything in return? Or will they just be able to order up some WaPo scolding every time citizens demand real health care reform of their elected representatives? In other words, what is clear from this is that the WaPo doesn’t give a shit about neutrality, they care only about an illusion of "objectivity." But what remains unclear is the rest of the equation–just how the WaPo managed to insert itself as the facilitator between lobbyists and our government–and the gatekeeper chasing citizens away at the same time.

Update: WaPo’s full CYA:

A flyer was distributed this week offering an “underwriting opportunity” for a dinner on health-care reform, in which the news department had been asked to participate.

The language in the flyer and the description of the event preclude our participation.

We will not participate in events where promises are made that in exchange for money The Post will offer access to newsroom personnel or will refrain from confrontational questioning. Our independence from advertisers or sponsors is inviolable.

There is a long tradition of news organizations hosting conferences and events, and we believe The Post, including the newsroom, can do these things in ways that are consistent with our values.

A number of people have been expressing pleasant surprise at Jello Jay’s recent comments on the public option:

"We can’t count on insurance companies. They are just maximizing their profits. They are sticking it to consumers.

"I am all for letting insurance companies compete. But I want them to compete in a system that offers real health-care insurance. I call it a public plan," Rockefeller said….

Government-backed programs are big enough to bring medical costs down, Rockefeller believes.

"Back in 1993, all our Veterans Administration hospitals got together and agreed to buy prescription drugs as a group. The next week, the costs of those drugs went down by 50 percent.

"Today, the insurance industry runs this whole deal, spending $1.4 million every day to fight health-insurance reform. The government has a lot of power to lower prices," Rockefeller said….

"We have a moral choice. This is a classic case of the good guys versus the bad guys. I know it is not political for me to say that," Rockefeller added.

"But do you want to be non-partisan and get nothing? Or do you want to be partisan and end up with a good health- care plan? That is the choice." [my emphasis]

Now, I am happy to hear Jello Jay talk like a Democrat, demand that we put people’s interest ahead of corporations.

And I think the commentary on Jello Jay’s aggressive words here often forgets the "politics is local" rule: while every state (save maybe insurance-heavy states like CT) would benefit from the implementation of real health care reform, West Virginia no doubt really could use it.

That said, I am also cognizant of a little historical detail. The most "important" legislative act Jello Jay did last year, for his own career, was to shepherd the FISA Amendment Act through Congress (yeah, "important" is in scare quotes). And the single most important event that brought about Jello Jay’s success came when then-candidate Obama flip-flopped on his promises to oppose retroactive immunity, and with that flip-flop signaled to the rest of the caucus it was time to support the bill.

Candidate Obama saved Jello Jay’s legislative butt last summer (much to our chagrin).

One of Candidate Obama’s earliest Senate backers, of course, was Jello Jay. A guy who loudly supported Obama even when his state voted in large numbers against him in the primary.

Well, here we are with President Obama, revving up the fight for his most important legislative project. Jello Jay is no longer SSCI Chair–he has moved to Commerce, a Committee that will have some say in this process,  and one that certainly wields some serious influence. And now we find Jello Jay making sense in a way that many of the most moderates in the Senate are not doing.

I have no proof–but I have a hunch that Jello Jay’s welcome statements may stem partly from this close legislative cooperation in the past.

I of course still don’t think Obama should have caved on FISA last year. But I will take some bitter satisfaction if doing so ends up getting us an unexpected legislative champion for heath care.

I have a busy morning here, but want to draw attention to an article this morning in the New York Times by Robert Pear on the ongoing discussions of healthcare reform for the United States:

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.
…
“There seems to be a sense of the room that some form of tax penalty is an effective means to enforce such an obligation, though only on those for whom affordable coverage is available,” said the memorandum, prepared by David C. Bowen, a neurobiologist who is director of the health staff at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The proposal for an individual mandate was one of the few policy disagreements between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in their fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. She wanted to require everyone to have and maintain insurance. He said he wanted to “ensure affordable coverage for all,” but would initially apply the mandate only to children.

The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

"Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance." Yeah, no one could have anticipated that I guess. It suggests that those allowed in these discussions are overwhelmingly tied to the current system; few if any represent alternative approaches. So what is Kennedy’s staff doing? And why are people sworn to secrecy? Surely this deserves more light. With regards to "mandate," the mandate they’re talking about is everyone required to purchase insurance. That does little to control total costs, which is the macro issue that drives the long-run insolvency claims about Medicare/Medicaid and the fact that US costs are higher than elsewhere.

If everyone must have PRIVATE insurance, that’s full employment and industry expansion beyond that for the insurance industry. OTOH, if we move to universal care and single-payer, that cuts the throat of the private health insurance industry. I know which seems more palatable to me. I’ll be honest, I had to struggle to find anything positive to say at all about the things laid out in Pear’s article. There is maybe some help in this for the truly poor. Pretty clear though that for the rest of the country, they are going to keep getting raped as usual on healthcare; perhaps even more so. This doesn’t do squat for anybody in my family, nor anybody I know. I understand that is not the overriding criteria of judgment, but it does matter to me. But we are going broke paying for medical insurance because we all have to buy individual policies that don’t provide that great of coverage and cost a fortune.

We only need the mandate because we refuse to consider true national health insurance. Obama was focussed on bringing costs down during the campaign–the best way to get costs down, despite his protestations, is to get the ones who use the service least to pay into the pot.

If the gov’t was going to offer a program that undercut the private plans (which it easily could because of efficiency), it would theoretically drive private costs down or drive private insurers out of business. . . which would mostly be fine with me. However, with a medicare-for-all model as a competitor, we could make that mandate seem much less burdensome to individuals (and less expensive to the federal gov’t). . . and those that wanted to keep private insurance or demand supplemental plans from the market could do that. . . which sounds like a much freer market solution than the one we have, or the patchwork I expect to get.

As I have said for a long time now, the proper way to craft and pitch a doable healthcare reform is to make it "Medicare For Everyone!"

[The thoughts expressed in this post, aside from the Pear NYT quote, are an amalgamation of those from a discussion I had online with a few extremely bright good friends]

One of the reasons it was so unwise for Tony Fratto to open his big fat mouth today regarding the White House habit of losing emails is because it offered Waxman an excuse to make previously unreleased information publicly available–an excuse Waxman was not about to turn down. Waxman released a chunk of dates for which offices in the White House have no archived email (note, this list does not appear to include all of the dates for which there is no email, nor does it include dates for which the email volume is smaller than it should be).

For the White House Office: December 17, 2003, December 20, 2003, December 21, 2003, January 9, 2004, January 10, 2004, January 11, 2004, January 29, 2004, February 1, 2004, February 2, 2004, February 3, 2004, February 7, 2004, and February 8, 2004.

For the Office of the Vice President: September 12, 2003, October 1, 2003, October 2, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 5, 2003, January 29, 2004, January 30, 2004, January 31, 2004, February 7, 2004, February 8, 2004, February 15, 2005, February 16, 2005, February 17, 2005, May 21, 2005, May 22, 2005, May 23, 2005.

For the Council on Environmental Quality: 81 days, including the entire period between November 1, 2003 through January 11, 2004.

For the Council of Economic Advisers: 103 days, including the entire period between November 2, 2003 through January 11, 2004.

For the Office of Management and Budget: 59 days, including the entire period between November 1, 2003 through December 9, 2003.

For the U.S. Trade Representative: 73 days, including the entire period between February 11, 2004 through April 18, 2004.

And as a good weedy blogger, I thought this a wonderful opportunity to try to figure out any significance for the dates.

I’m going to go back and look out how the dates for the WH and OVP correlate with the Plame investigation. But for now, I’d like to raise one red flag regarding the dates as it pertains to the missing email: All the emails from OMB for the period covering the lead-up to and immediate aftermath of the passage of Medicare Part D are gone.

You’ll recall that the final version the Medicare bill passed the House on November 22, 2003 and the Senate on November 25. Passage in the House was particularly contentious, with the vote taking place at 3 AM and one Republican Congressman–Nick Smith–alleging that Tom DeLay offered him a bribe to vote in favor of the bill (he did not).

GOP leaders held the vote open for nearly three hours. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who customarily leaves partisan arm-twisting to others, was actively involved. So was Tommy Thompson, President Bush’s secretary of Health and Human Services, even though Cabinet members seldom enter the House or Senate chambers.

Media reports have alleged that an undisclosed Republican told Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., that if he voted for the bill, business interests would contribute $100,000 to help his son, Brad, succeed him. Smith is not seeking re-election in 2004. His son is one of several Republican candidates running for the seat.

"Not only was this bribe offered to a member of Congress, it was offered on the floor of the House of Representatives by another member of Congress," McAuliffe wrote Ashcroft.

Chief among the objections for people like Smith was the cost of the program, then predicted to be around $400 billion. Less than two months after the passage of the bill, on January 29, the White House revealed that the cost of the legislation was actually much higher than it had forecast publicly.

Bush administration officials had indications for months that the new Medicare prescription drug law might cost considerably more than the $400 billion advertised by the White House and Congress, according to internal documents and sources familiar with the issue.

The president’s top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade — one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November.

The higher forecast, coming less than two months after President Bush signed the landmark bill into law, has fueled conservative criticism of White House spending policies and prompted accusations that the administration deliberately withheld financial information as it pushed the bill through a divided Congress.

Bush, addressing the controversy yesterday, said aides first gave him a complete budget estimate for the Medicare law two weeks ago. "The Medicare reform we did is a good reform, fulfills a long- standing promise to our seniors," he said of the law, which will offer elderly Americans help in paying for medicine and encourage them to join private health plans.

Sources familiar with the issue agreed that the White House did not finish its fiscal assessment of the law until this month.

[snip]

The White House’s new cost estimate, disclosed Thursday by Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten at a briefing for GOP lawmakers, drew escalating complaints yesterday from some Democrats and conservative Republicans who had opposed the law.

"The question is what did they know and when did they know it?" said Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Calif.). [my emphasis]

Now, the really incendiary communications about the bill took place much earlier, in June, when the Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, first calculated the true cost of the program. But Foster was threatened with termination if he revealed those higher costs.

Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster told lawmakers Wednesday he had shared his higher estimate of the cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill with White House, Health and Human Services and Office of Management and Budget officials, but Democrats angered by the administration’s suppression of that higher price tag did not find the "smoking gun" they were seeking in the controversy.

In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Foster for the first time discussed publicly how Thomas Scully, the former director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), threatened to fire him if he responded to requests by members of Congress seeking cost estimates of the Medicare bill that Congress passed last year.

The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the new law would cost $395 billion, while Foster’s tally was $534 billion. Many conservatives resisted the bill, and others were only convinced to support it by promises that it would not top $400 billion.

The several investigations regarding the cost of the program (including one launched by Waxman as the minority leader of House Oversight) have focused on this earlier period. But one big question remains–whether, in the development of its budget during the last months of 2003, the Bush Administration finalized its cost for the program, and if so, whether they did so before Bush signed the bill on December 8. At least last year, the Office of the Administration said there were no OMB emails archived from the beginning of November until the day after Bush signed the Medicare bill, December 9, 2003. So if we’re going to pinpoint whether Bush knew he had lied about the cost of the Medicare before it became law, we’re going to have a difficult time doing so by using OMB email.

According to the LAT, the GOP presidential candidates have come up with a brilliant way of offering insurance to the uninsured: leave out those with pre-existing conditions, including people with medical histories just like the candidates’ themselves.

When Rudolph W. Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer in thespring of 2000, one thing he did not have to worry about was a lack ofmedical insurance.

Today, the former New York mayor joins two other cancer survivors inseeking the Republican presidential nomination: Arizona Sen. JohnMcCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skinmalignancy, and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson had lymphoma, acancer of the immune system.

All three have offered proposals with the stated aim of helping the 47million people in the U.S. who have no health insurance, includingthose with preexisting medical conditions.

But under the plans all three have put forward, cancer survivors suchas themselves could not be sure of getting coverage — especially ifthey were not already covered by a government or job-related plan andhad to seek insurance as individuals.

"Unless it’s in a state that has very strong consumer protections, theywould likely be denied coverage," said economist Paul Fronstin of theEmployee Benefit Research Institute, who has reviewed the candidates’proposals. "People with preexisting conditions would not be able to getcoverage or would not be able to afford it."

I was drawn to the article because I’m one of those the article explains would be denied health care coverage in almost all cases.

An expert with access to a manual that insurers use to make coveragedecisions said that most companies wouldn’t consider a cancer survivorfor 10 years, with some exceptions, and then would only issue a policyat a higher premium.

Nice to know I can always escape to Ireland if I lose my healthcare.

But in reading it, I wanted to recommend it because it is really the kind of coverage we need for a presidential election. It is informative, explaining in several different ways why and how cancer survivors cannot find affordable healthcare. It tells voters–in terms that put the voter at the center of the debate–information critical to assessing the candidates. And it’s a great story, using the cancer history of three leading candidates to emphasize the gaps in their plans.

It’s so rare we see good reporting on the presidential race, this article deserves attention.

I know you have all been worried at my seeming recovery from my obsession with Ed Gillespie. But worry not–the dearth of Gillespie posts was mostly explained by my travel schedule (which gets really bad again this week, then gets better), and not any disinterest in the guy who took over after they fired Bush’s brain.

And this, I guess, is the kind of logic you get from the Lobbyist-in-Chief with which they replaced Bush’s brain, from this NYT article chronicling how glum Republicans are at their diminishing (political) fortunes.

At the White House, administration officials urged CongressionalRepublicans to try to remain positive and ride out the current turmoil.Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush, told the visitors,according to multiple accounts, that had Republicans sided withDemocrats on the health program, they would have opened themselves towithering criticism from conservatives and been in a worse positionthan they are now.

Let’s see… "had Republicans sided with Democrats" on the S-CHIP vote. I wonder how Representatives Tom Davis, Heather Wilson, and Don Young feel about that assertion, since they were among the 45 Republicans in the House who voted for S-CHIP? Perhaps it’s no accident that Tom Davis is one of the Republicans quoted as complaining about the Republican stance on S-CHIP.

“We need to be on offense,” said Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican considering a Senate run.

Likewise, I wonder how Senators like Orrin Hatch and Kit Bond–and the 16 other Republicans who voted for S-CHIP–feel about Gillespie’s suggestion that Republicans didn’t side with Democrats on this bill. Last I checked, no one doubted that Orrin Hatch was a Republican, but I guess the Lobbyist-in-Chief knows better?

I’m also curious what Gillespie, who is himself Catholic, thinks about the campaign run by Catholics United, which is targeting 10 purportedly pro-life Representatives (including three in my heavily Catholic state!!) for their votes against S-CHIP. It seems to me that these 10 Representatives have "opened themselves to withering criticism from conservatives." But I guess that’s not the kind of conservative that the Lobbyist-in-Chief had in mind?

In short, Gillespie’s public accounting of the benefit that opposition to S-CHIP will have for the Republican party rings pretty hollow, if not outright false.

But I guess that’s why Carl Hulse received "multiple accounts" of Gillespie’s ridiculous comments?

ThinkProgress got the email that Mitch McConnell’s staffer claimed he had not sent out.

Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on thekid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP. Bloggershave done a little digging and turned up that the Dad owns his ownbusiness (and the building it’s in), seems to have some commercialrental income and Graeme and a sister go to a private school that,according to its website, costs about $20k a year ‹for each kid‹despite the news profiles reporting a family income of only $45k forthe Frosts. Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vettingthis family?

Gosh. You think maybe the mainstream press, which claims to pride itself on its accuracy, will admit that this smear was not solely blog-driven?

Don’t answer that.

Like many of us, Grassley argues that if you bring an issue that has widespread support among the electorate up for a vote often enough, you will eventually convince intransigent Republicans to vote for it.

Grassley said if he were the Democrats, he would send the SCHIPexpansion to a vote every three months, along with campaignadvertisements accusing Republicans of abandoning children. That way,pressure would mount either on Bush to sign the bill or on HouseRepublicans to override the veto.

Of course, Grassley is referring to SCHIP and not the Iraq War. But the comment–and the article more generally–is worthwhile nonetheless. For Grassley states clearly that the Bush Administration is willing to sustain awful policy outcomes to make an ideological point.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and White Houseaides agreed that Bush’s opposition to the legislation stems not fromits price tag but from far larger health policy issues. The White Housewants to use the issue of uninsured children to resurrect thepresident’s long-dormant proposals to change the federal tax code tohelp the uninsured, adults and children alike, Grassley said, callingthat a laudable goal but unrealistic politically.

[snip]

Asked if Bush was holding the children’s health bill hostage, Grassley said, "Yes."

The reporter should have posed that last question again, asking Grassley whether Bush is holding children’s health–and not just the bill–hostage. Because that’s clearly what is happening.

And, as Grassley makes clear, Bush has created this crisis–in which children’s health will suffer for Bush’s ideological ideas. Back in the spring, Grassley encouraged Bush to work with Congress to push his privatized insurance scheme. But Bush did nothing, setting up the crisis we’ll see after this bill passes and Bush vetoes it.

In talks this spring with Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt,White House National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard and Hubbard’sdeputy, Keith Hennessey, Grassley discussed linking an extension of the10-year-old SCHIP program to a more ambitious effort to address theadult uninsured. Grassley encouraged the White House to try to round upDemocratic support for that approach, but when White House officialsmade no such effort, Grassley told them in April that the children’shealth program would have to stand alone. [my emphasis]

Bush will willingly make anyone–including uninsured children–suffer to win his ideological pissing contests.
And if Democrats can’t make it clear that these are the stakes, we might as well fold and go home.

No, not to the seniors enrolled in Medicare, silly! To the private insurance companies. Yet another GAO report has found yet another contracting scam that BushCo is ignoring.

Private insurance companies participating in Medicarehave been allowed to keep tens of millions of dollars that should havegone to consumers, and the Bush administration did not properly auditthe companies or try to recover money paid in error, Congressionalinvestigators say in a new report.

What’s remarkable about this though, is it is at least the third incidence where–when faced with accounting improprieties from a corporation working with the government–the Bush Administration refuses to ask for the money back.