Pushing One Agenda At White House, Others On Hill

Enlarge this image

Health care industry executives joined President Obama (center) at the White House on May 11 as he announced a health care savings agreement. Pictured with the president, from left: Tom Priselac of Cedars-Sinai Health System; Richard Clark of Merck; George Halverson of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; J. James Rohack of the American Medical Association; Dennis River of SEIU Healthcare; and Michael Mussallem of Edwards Lifesciences. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Health care industry executives joined President Obama (center) at the White House on May 11 as he announced a health care savings agreement. Pictured with the president, from left: Tom Priselac of Cedars-Sinai Health System; Richard Clark of Merck; George Halverson of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; J. James Rohack of the American Medical Association; Dennis River of SEIU Healthcare; and Michael Mussallem of Edwards Lifesciences.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senate Democratic leaders last week gave up hope that they could pass a health-care overhaul bill before the August recess. It's a far cry from May 11, when health-care executives clustered around President Obama as he announced agreement on a savings package worth as much as $2 trillion.

In the months since that show of unity, however, the industry executives have committed millions of dollars to lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers wrestle with the details of a health care overhaul. (See details of their lobbying expenditures this year below.)

Moreover, the May 11 agreement and others negotiated by the White House and Senate Finance Committee have not been upheld by other Democrats on Capitol Hill. That has angered many of these executives and jeopardized the deals.

Among the deals: $155 billion in hospital cost savings over 10 years, and an understanding with brand-name drugmakers that would help cut prescription drug prices for many seniors on Medicare.

Enlarge this image

Vice President Biden made an announcement on health care at the White House on July 8, 2009. Joining Biden, from left, were: Wayne Smith of Community Health Systems; Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius; Rich Umbdenstock of the American Hospital Association; and Richard Bracken of the Hospital Corporation of America. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Vice President Biden made an announcement on health care at the White House on July 8, 2009. Joining Biden, from left, were: Wayne Smith of Community Health Systems; Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius; Rich Umbdenstock of the American Hospital Association; and Richard Bracken of the Hospital Corporation of America.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

The industry representatives present on May 11 included executives from the American Medical Association and American Hospital Association; both groups are now allied with the administration, at least temporarily.

The administration last week acknowledged that health-care industry executives met at least 48 times with officials at the White House, starting in early February.

White House Counsel Greg Craig disclosed names and dates in a letter to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that filed a freedom-of-information lawsuit to get the more complete, official logs of the visits.

Craig told CREW that Obama "has decided to exercise his discretion" when it comes to releasing the White House visitor logs. CREW countered that the limited disclosure "is directly at odds with President Obama's stated commitment to transparency and accountability."

The Obama administration's refusal to release the logs has prompted critics to draw comparisons to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who refused to reveal which energy industry executives were involved when he led a taskforce that wrote a national energy policy. Lawsuits in that case dragged on for most of the Bush administration.

Below is the White House list of the players in the health care debate who have visited 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, along with the number of times each visited. NPR matched those names against the lobbying reports filed by the organizations they represent: