Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A few days ago I blogged about a supposedly blockbuster announcement from a group of healthcare executives: they were 100% with President Obama on his crusade to cut skyrocketing medical expenses and figured they could reduce the growth of healthcare costs by 1.5 percentage points a year.  That’s a cool $2 trillion over ten years.

That was on Monday, and nobody seemed to have a problem with the announcement.  Ditto for Tuesday and Wednesday.  On Thursday, however, after, um, consultations, the healthcare honchos started rowing things back:

The president of the American Hospital Association said Thursday that a deal with the White House to cut the growth in health care spending has been “spun way away from the original intent.”

….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.

I’m sure the reason it took them three days to correct the record is because they were in such a state of shock initially that they could hardly pick their jaws off the ground.  And the reason they all stood around beaming for the cameras when Obama made the announcement is because they were simply paralyzed in The Presence.  And the reason they’re changing their tune now, away from the spotlights, has nothing to do with the fact that they never had the slightest intention of seriously following through on their cost-cutting promises in the first place.

And I have a bridge to sell you.

Look: I never believed the $2 trillion number.  But after weeks of work and a big public announcement, it’s just pure mendacity to pretend that they were taken by surprise and had never agreed to anything beyond a “general commitment to be part of bending the cost curve.”  Spare me.

These guys are never going to be partners in any kind of real reform of healthcare.  Never.  Beneath the smiles and the photo-ops, I sure hope the Obama team understands this.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate