(Reuters) – President Barack Obama, making a final push for healthcare reform, will back bipartisan plans to stamp out waste in government-run medical programs for the old and needy, the White House said on Tuesday.

Obama will unveil the proposal during a visit to St Cloud, Missouri on Wednesday to rally popular support for his key domestic policy objective, as the bitter battle over healthcare enters its final weeks.

The White House said the new effort to root out improper payments in Medicare and Medicaid, could double taxpayer savings over the next three years to at least $2 billion.

“We cannot afford nor should we tolerate this waste of taxpayer dollars,” the White House said.

An estimated $54 billion was lost through improper Medicare and Medicaid payments in 2009. Medicare is the government-run program covering elderly Americans and Medicaid is for the country’s poorest.

Obama is seeking to crack down on waste and fraud as his administration strives to secure an overhaul of the $2.5 trillion healthcare system to contain costs and expand coverage to tens of millions of more Americans.

The action endorses Republican-backed proposals on cheats, in a gesture designed to highlight Obama’s commitment to embrace opposition ideas alongside his own Democratic Party.

The plan will offer private auditors a share of the money that they recoup in order to encourage them to dig deeper to uncover improper payments under Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama will also back bipartisan legislation to expand the ability of government agencies to undertake these so-called payment recapture audits by providing more funds.

(Reporting by Alister Bull; editing by Anthony Boadle) Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama made a renewed push for a long-stalled climate and energy bill Tuesday, urging lawmakers at a White House meeting to pass a comprehensive bill this year.

Fourteen senators from both parties — including several who remain undecided on the climate bill — met for more than an hour with Obama, four Cabinet members and White House energy adviser Carol Browner.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama wants a comprehensive bill that includes a cap on emissions of pollution blamed for global warming.

“The president’s strong belief is that in order to transition ourselves away from our dependence on foreign oil and into a clean-energy economy, that we need a strong incentive to do that,” Gibbs said.

A bill sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., aims to cut emissions of pollution-causing greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020. The bill would abandon a broad “cap-and-trade” approach to reducing carbon pollution. Instead it would apply different carbon controls to different sectors of the economy.

Kerry called the meeting “terrific” and said Obama “made it very, very clear that he believes it is critical to have a price on carbon,” a move that some Republicans and business groups oppose because it would raise the price of oil and coal.

Kerry said lawmakers were “moving very rapidly” to draft a bill that could be on the Senate floor this spring.

Kerry and other lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation’s output of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.

Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time. Motor fuel may be subject to a carbon tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector. And industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before it is phased in.

The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.
Lieberman called the meeting very important.

“We’ve not been in the same room together talking about what are our shared goals, which is to make America energy independent, to create new jobs and reduce air pollution,” he said.
Graham said he believes a comprehensive bill is the only one that can pass the Senate.

“There’s not 60 votes doing energy only for offshore drilling. There’s not 60 votes for nuclear power the way I would like. Only when you marry up climate change — cleaning up the air — with energy independence do you get” to 60 votes in the Senate, he said.

“If you’re a Republican, and you believe we should ‘drill, baby, drill,’ now’s your chance,” Graham said.

Beside Kerry, Graham and Lieberman, others attending the meeting were Democratic Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Barbara Boxer of California, Maria Cantwell of Washington state, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Republicans who attended were Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, George LeMieux of Florida, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Earlier Tuesday, Kerry, Graham and Lieberman met with a group of business leaders, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute, Nuclear Energy Institute and National Association of Manufacturers.

By MATTHEW DALY (AP) – Associated Press
Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Ben Feller contributed to this report.

Facebook is mightier than the sword, or so it would appear with a new policy announced this week in Washington. On Monday, the White House said it would allow companies, including Microsoft and Yahoo, to export such technology as instant messaging, chatting and photo sharing to some of the world’s most censorial countries, including Sudan, Iran and Cuba, in the hope that increased access to information and greater communication among citizens will establish more tolerant societies and progressive governments.

Specifically, The New York Times reports that the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), run through the Department of the Treasury, will issue a general license to companies providing the “export of free personal Internet services and software geared toward the populations” in each country. Previously, these companies had feared violating existing sanctions and were thus hesitant to send their technology overseas. In line with her previous assertion that an uncensored Internet is a basic freedom, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posited that blog posts and viral videos are critical weapons in the fight against repression.

This policy is very good — if not great — news for journalists and advocates in countries where access to Twitter might one day lay the groundwork for regime change. I’ve written before about the importance of such Google applications as Gmail and Gchat as a vital means of communication for underground activists, and this latest news can only be greeted with open arms by those who ordinarily find themselves handcuffed by repressive regimes.

Still, it’s not exactly open season for the opposition movements. In mid-February, the Iranian government slowed Internet access to a crawl in advance of presumed protests. Opposition tweets — so prevalent in the aftermath of the country’s 2009 election — were largely silenced. Though social-networking applications will soon be widely accessible in a way they haven’t yet been, to connect to the Internet, you still have to go through Big Brother.

It’s worth noting that this policy is coming at a time when the president is showing an increasingly confrontational attitude toward rogue regimes he once said he could and would engage with. Secretary Clinton minced no words when she condemned Chinese cyberattacks on Google: This was as much a call for free speech as it was a stinging repudiation of Chinese policy. A lot of folks think the president and his team have backed themselves into a corner on the heels of a failed engagement policy — in this context, it’s interesting to see what weapons they are now pulling into their arsenal. What remains to be seen is whether the administration’s stance on Google, Twitter and Facebook is an opening salvo in a tougher-foreign-policy campaign or merely saber rattling.

In the meantime, here’s to hoping that the reporters, freedom fighters and human-rights activists around the world start downloading these new applications with gusto. May their wireless hot spots be plentiful and their connections crystal clear.

By Alex Wagner, politicsdaily.com

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama stood with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Thursday and pledged that the United States would work with its ally, even as Greece’s enormous debts sparked frenzied trading.

Papandreou said he outlined European proposals in his White House meeting and Obama reacted positively to European ideas about cracking down on currency speculation. He also said the issue would be discussed at the next meeting of the Group of 20 summit of leading and emerging economies in June.

Earlier Tuesday, European officials urged the U.S. to curb certain financial instruments.

A market frenzy in recent weeks saw traders make bets worth billions of dollars against the euro and on the chances of Greece not repaying its massive debts. Those market worries have undermined the 16-country currency.

Papandreou said he also detailed steps that Greece has taken to reduce its deficit and reform its economy.

During a reception for Greek Independence Day in the East Room, Obama drew applause from a largely Greek-American audience when he said, “Whether in good times or in bad times, the people of Greece will always have a friend and a partner in the United States of America.”

Obama added: “This solidarity continues today — whether it’s the close counterterrorism efforts between our governments or the deep partnerships between our people.”
The president made no mention of the financial proposals.

The Greek leader also met with U.S. lawmakers Tuesday, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The Greek people can be assured that the United States will stand with them at this critical time,” Pelosi said in a brief joint appearance with the Greek prime minister.

In a boost for Papandreou, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Tuesday that Greece had been finally added to a list of countries whose citizens do not need visas for tourist visits to the U.S. Most European countries already enjoy that privilege, so the issue has been sensitive for the Greek government, which has been pleading for years to join the visa waiver program.

“As the prime minister and I discussed this afternoon, Greece’s participation in the visa waiver program will strengthen security in both our countries,” Obama said. “And whether it’s to do business or visit family and friends, it will now be easier for our Greek friends to visit the United States.”

Papandreou’s trip to Washington along with his finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, comes as Greece tries to climb out of a steep economic hole that widened after Papandreou’s Socialist party came to power in October and revealed that its budget deficit was far worse than the previous government had disclosed.

Greece revised its budget deficit to 12.7 percent of gross domestic product for 2009 from below 4 percent earlier that year.

Papandreou’s trip is part of a four-nation tour aimed at boosting Greece’s financial credibility and winning support for more favorable interest rates for loans. Papandreou says the solution lies with support from European Union countries. He was in the United States as the Obama administration and Congress are considering major changes in the U.S. financial system designed to prevent future activities such as those that caused a major recession in Obama’s first year in office.

“I found a very positive response from the president,” Papandreou said of Obama’s reaction to his call for currency trading reforms.

Papandreou and other European leaders have been urging the U.S. to take specific action on currency trading. The EU has said it is considering banning financial instruments including certain credit default swaps that it believes have exasperated the global financial crisis.

Credit default swaps are a form of insurance for buyers to protect them against the risk that a seller or borrower would default on a security such as a government bond. In “naked” sales, the buyer does not hold the underlying asset and faces no such risk — but can make a profit on the swap itself.

Papandreou on Monday compared the practice of selling naked credit default swaps to buying insurance on a neighbor’s house and then burning it down to collect.

Papaconstantinou warned in an interview with The Associated Press that leading economic powers have not yet implemented the changes needed to avoid another financial crisis.

“The real question that we should be asking ourselves on both sides of the ocean is, `Have we learned the lessons of that financial crisis?’” he said. “I think the honest answer is that despite some political will to do so, we haven’t actually taken all the necessary measures.”

By DESMOND BUTLER (AP) – Associated Press

Whatever the legislative fate of health reform — now in the hands of a few besieged House Democrats — the reformers have failed in their argument. Their proposal has divided Democrats while uniting Republicans, returned American politics to well-worn ideological ruts, employed legislative tactics that smack of corruption, squandered the president’s public standing, lowered public regard for Congress to French revolutionary levels, sucked the oxygen from other agenda items, reengaged the abortion battle, produced freaks and prodigies of nature such as a Republican senator from Massachusetts, raised questions about the continued governability of America and caused the White House chief of staff to distance himself from the president’s ambitions.

It is quite an accomplishment. For the president, it must also be quite a shock, because he thought he was taking a reasonable, middle path on health reform.

At the start of this process, many Democrats preferred a single-payer health system — essentially, Medicare for everyone. Short of this goal, they advocated a public option that would compete with private insurance companies and prove the superiority of government-run care. But President Obama rejected a single-payer approach and signaled early that the public option was expendable.

Obama also rejected the one genuinely bipartisan health reform proposal — made by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah) — that would have ended employer-based insurance and given individuals a deduction to buy their own coverage from a menu of private insurance options. (Wyden has turned out to be the ignored prophet of the health debate. “If you . . . just pound it through on a partisan vote,” he said last June, “you have people practically as soon as the ink is dry looking to have it repealed.”)

Instead, the president chose the current complex, regulatory approach to reform, precisely because it seemed less radical and disruptive than the other options. It was patterned in part on health reforms in Massachusetts signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, thereby applying at least a veneer of bipartisanship.

So what went wrong? Some analysts blame structural factors, particularly the growth in partisanship. It is true that the Republican caucus in Congress has become more homogeneous in its conservatism. But it is also true that Obama wants to seriously expand the role of government at a moment when skepticism of government is widespread. His health-reform plan may have seemed moderate on the congressional ideological spectrum. But the creation of a new middle-class entitlement can’t be considered moderate in the context of the times when even previous entitlement commitments seem unsustainable. And it has not helped that the Massachusetts model of health reform has resulted in unchecked cost increases, requiring higher taxes and benefit cuts. These financial concerns not only unify Republicans of every ideological stripe, they reach into the right of the Democratic coalition.

In fact, these structural obstacles were increased by a major strategic miscalculation. Obama clearly believed that the economic crisis was fully fungible — that a turn to government activism in one policy area would translate into support in other areas. So he attempted a rhetorical sleight of hand, arguing that economic recovery required health reform and a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. Few bought it. To the contrary, the massive — and, in my view, necessary — bank bailout only increased public skepticism about government and congressional concerns about spending.

The final reason for Obama’s failed argument on health reform is neither structural nor strategic. It is psychological. As the evidence mounted that the body politic was rejecting Obama’s health-system transplant, Obama faced a choice about the nature of his presidency. He could retreat toward incrementalism or insist on transformation. Obama had previewed his impatience with incrementalism during the campaign. Similar to his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama turned hard against the Clinton model. “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America,” he said, “in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.”

In retrospect, Obama’s greatest achievement during the 2008 campaign was to combine soothing reassurance with a message of transformational change in a single political persona. Governing, however, has required a choice between reassurance and transformation.

Because Obama has chosen liberal transformation, the political outcomes are limited: He can appear radical in victory or weak in defeat. Given his health-reform decisions, it is no longer possible for Obama to be a president both strong and unifying.

By Michael Gerson, washingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he wants to change how the United States deals with medical malpractice lawsuits, although he says Republicans are overstating its effects on the health care system.

Obama on Thursday said he wants to work across the aisle and incorporate changes to malpractice rules. Republicans favor changes as part of the proposed health care overhaul. Obama disputes their claim that malpractice lawsuits are the biggest driver of medical inflation.

Rep. John Boehner, the top Republican in the House, says lawsuits have helped grow the size of health care costs. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, says it is unfair to cap the size of lawsuits when the health care system is to blame.

Obama says he’s looking at pilot programs.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama told Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell that time wasn’t equally divided between GOP and Democratic talk at the health care summit because “I’m the president.”

Obama suggested the time he took talking at the outset of the talks shouldn’t be charged to the time allotted Democrats and Republican participants to speak for their parties. McConnell complained at one point that Democrats had talked twice as long as Republicans.

Obama responded by saying “I know there was an imbalance.” But he also tried to keep the proceedings from taking on the more formal structure of a House or Senate floor debate. At one point he noted that the meeting was not formal when one lawmaker interrupted another to ask if he would “yield” for a point.

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate Republican leader on Thursday urged President Barack Obama to begin anew in an effort to draft a bipartisan overhaul of healthcare.

Speaking at the White House healthcare summit, Lamar Alexander said, “Let’s start over,” and urged the president not to try to jam his own measure through Congress and a Republican wall of opposition. “It’s not appropriate,” Alexander said.

By reuters
(Reporting by Thomas Ferraro; editing by Anthony Boadle)