Obama administration won’t talk health care industry visitors with watchdog group — MedCity Morning Read, July 22, 2009

Town hall meeting on health care in Annandale, Va., July 1, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. — At a time when President Obama is offering the media and the public unprecedented access to White House goings-on, his administration is saying “no” to information requests from at least one watchdog group.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the White House for a list of 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and others, who have visited President Obama as he stumps for reforming the nation’s health care system. The group wants to the material so it can gauge the influence of those executives on the health care reform debate, the L.A. Times said.

The Secret Service sent back a reply that said the frequency of such visits was considered presidential records and exempt from public disclosure laws. As a presidential candidate, Obama promised transparency in devising a new health care plan for the nation so that Americans could see what normally happens behind closed doors, the Times said.

The promise of transparency also was an about-face from the Bush administration’s policy of keeping much information confidential.

Citizens for Responsibility plans to sue the White House for the information as early as today. The group already has sued for similar information about coal industry executives, according to the L.A. Times.

Meanwhile, President Obama readies for a trip to Cleveland on Thursday to hold a town-hall meeting about health care reform, the Plain Dealer said. He has taken the lead role in the reform debate as progress by congressional committees stalls and Americans appear to lose some of their taste for the reform, the New York Times said.

On Tuesday, the president once again urged lawmakers to move quickly on their health reform measures, criticizing the “politics of the moment” and congressional leaders who may be putting off a decision on legislation “until special interests can kill it,” the L.A. Times said.

More stories worth a read:

• Why did Obama pick Shaker Heights? (WKYC)
• Amerca’s hospital industry: Taking a scalpel to costs (Economist magazine)
• Hospitals say free care has high cost (Columbus Dispatch)
• Health reform: Accountable Care Organizations — the real thing this time? (New America Foundation’s New Health Dialogue blog)
• White coats, pink slips; as hospitals struggle with rising costs, including charity care, some of the doctors they employ are losing their jobs (Columbus Dispatch)
• Procter & Gamble drug unit closer to sale, could fetch about $3 billion (Wall Street Journal; subscription required)
• UnitedHealth profit soars 155% (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune)
• Missing links (Financial Times)
• For Merck, asthma drug helps offset earnings fall (New York Times)
• The Work-Up: Costly drugs known as biologics prompt exclusivity debate (New York Times)
• Long arm of Johnson & Johnson reaches Tysabri (Wall Street Journal Health blog)
• Echo Therapeutics eyes $8 million in new money (MassDevice)
• Major National Institute of Mental Health research project to test approaches to altering the course of schizophrenia (NIMH)
• Johns Hopkins students embed stem cells in sutures to enhance healing (Headlines@Hopkins)
• FDA lays framework for expedited H1N1 vaccine approvals (MedPage Today)
• Battelle and affiliated national labs win 24 R&D 100 awards (Techlife Columbus blog)

[Photo credit: White House Photo, Pete Souza, 7/1/09}