By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Obama and his team faced some scrutiny last week after adding a photo to the White House Flickr account featuring a meeting among the president's top advisers. The only problem: It was 100 percent men. Yesterday, the White House promptly trotted out three top female advisers for a photo-op with the president.
Top administration officials cut backroom deals with the nation's top drug companies to win support for President Obama's health care overhaul, threatening them with steeper taxes if they resisted and promising a better financial deal for the industry if they acquiesced, according to internal documents released Thursday by House Republicans.
President Obama's top female White House aides earn more on average than their male counterparts, a reversal from the pattern in the George W. Bush administration, The Washington Times found in an analysis of 2011 pay records.
President Obama's health care overhaul is on track in many states, the White House asserted Wednesday. But officials said the administration is preparing a federal backstop anyway for states in which opposition to the new law has blocked planning.
Despite President Obama's promises to rein in health care costs as part of his reform bill, health spending nationwide is expected to rise more than if the sweeping legislation had never become law.
President Barack Obama has chosen Jay Carney, the communications chief to Vice President Joe Biden and a former Time magazine journalist, to be the next White House press secretary.
When President Obama signed his health care plan into law, he promised it would foster "choice and competition." Nine months later, Americans can count this as another Big Lie. Obamacare has instead reduced competition in the marketplace for health services.
The White House says it disagrees with a Virginia judge's ruling declaring a key provision of President Barack Obama's health care law unconstitutional. But officials say it does not create uncertainty about the implementation of the law's provisions.
A federal judge rejected a key provision of the Obama administration's health care law as unconstitutional Monday, ruling the government cannot require people to buy insurance, in a dispute that both sides agree will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
When a government report found that President Obama's health overhaul would modestly raise the nation's total health care tab, the White House responded with a statistic suggesting costs would go down.
The nation's health care tab will go up _ not down _ as a result of President Barack Obama's sweeping overhaul. That's the conclusion of a government forecast Thursday, which also predicts the increase will be modest.
"This report affirms that repealing the health care law would deny tax credits for millions of middle class families and result in higher deficits and fewer Americans with insurance," Deputy Chief of Staff Nancy-Ann DeParle wrote on the White House blog.
CBO: Lower costs, fewer covered after court ruling on Obama health law →
The documents show that former White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina and health care reform point woman Nancy-Ann DeParle told drug company representatives in June 2009 that if they didn't cooperate on the initiative, Mr. Obama would demand a 15 percent rebate on Medicare drugs and push to remove the tax deduction for direct consumer advertising — items that could cost the industry $100 billion over the next decade.
