IN FAIRNESS TO THE PRESIDENT...:

President of the American Hospital Association says the White House misstated deal (CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN & CHRIS FRATES, 5/15/09, Politico)

President Barack Obama described the agreement this week with six major health care organizations as a “watershed event,” hailing what the White House said was their promise to reduce spending by 1.5 percentage points annually for a decade, which he said could save as much as $2 trillion over that span.

But in a conference call Thursday, President Richard Umbdenstock told 230 member organizations that the agreement had been misrepresented. The groups, he said, had agreed to gradually ramp up to the 1.5 percentage-point target over 10 years – not to reduce spending by that much in each of the 10 years, .

“There has been a tremendous amount of confusion and frankly a lot of political spin,” Umbdenstock said on the call.

...it's just as likely that he didn't understand the discussion as that he intentionally misrepresented it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 15, 2009 7:27 AM