saturday, november 16 , 2019. the washington post eZ re A
BY AMY GOLDSTEINThe Trump administration on
friday issued controversial rules
compelling hospitals and insur-
ers to give consumers more infor-
mation upfront about what their
care will cost — requirements
that the president called a histor-
ic step to give Americans tools to
shop for affordable health care.
U nder one rule resisted for
months by a broad swath of the
health-care industry, hospitals
must for the first time reveal in a
consumer-friendly format the
discounted rates they negotiate
privately with insurers for a list of
300 services that patients can
schedule in advance, including
X-rays and Caesarean sections.
The requirement will t ake effect
in January 2021.
In a new twist, the administra-
tion is also proposing to require
most health plans that Ameri-
cans get through their jobs to
disclose the rates they negotiate
with hospitals and doctors in
their insurance networks, as well
as the amounts they pay to doc-
tors out-of-network.
Ta ken together, the pair of
actions — one a final rule, the
other in draft form — is part of
President Trump’s 2020 electoral
strategy to capi tal ize on polls that
show health care ranks among
Americans’ top domestic con-
cerns. Public opinion surveys
consistently show that consum-
ers are looking to government
especially to ease the burden of
escalating out-of-pocket costs.
“This is bigger than health
care,” Trump said in remarks
from the White House’s r oosevelt
room. “The word is transparen-
cy. I love transparency in many
ways. It is going to be incredible
for consumers, patients, good
doctors.”
The hospital industry has
vowed for months to sue to try to
block the requirements, and the
president and senior aides
sought preemptively to tarnish
such opposition.
“I don’t know if the hospitals
are going to like me anymore
with this,” Trump said. “That’s
okay. That’s okay.”
During a morning briefing, Joe
Grogan, director of the White
House’s Domestic Policy Council,
told reporters, “make no mistake
about it, this rule today will
irritate many vested interests in
Washington, D.C.”
The two biggest hospital trade
groups, the American Hospital
Association and the federation of
American Hospitals, confirmed
friday they plan a legal chal-
lenge.
The requirement to disclose
privately negotiated rates “hurts
competition, and we don’t think
they have the statutory authority
to do it,” said To m Nickels, the
American Hospital Association’s
executive vice president for gov-
ernment relations and public pol-
icy.
During the news briefing,
Health and Human Services Sec-
retary Alex Azar said, “We feel we
are on a very sound legal footing.”
other moves the administra-
tion has taken to reshape the U.S.
health-care system have been
blocked after being challenged in
court. Earlier this year, for in-
stance, a Washington-based fed-
eral judge ruled the administra-
tion did not have the authority to
force the drug industry to dis-
close drug prices in television
advertisements
And the administration itself
withdrew a major effort to rein in
drug prices by prohibiting re-
bates to insurance middlemen
following criticism the changes
could increase medicare premi-
ums before next year’s election.The issue of transparency in
health-care pricing has been a
drumbeat for the White House
and Trump’s top health advisers
for much of this year. In may,
administration officials made
clear they were developing an
executive order on the issue. In
late June, the president held a
signing ceremony in the White
House’s grand foyer to affix his
signature to that order.
The executive order directed
HHS and two other federal agen-
cies to develop far-reaching regu-
lations, the most controversial
part of which is the disclosure of
negotiated rates that always have
been secret. friday’s pair of rulesflow from that order.
on friday, Trump mischarac-
terized aspects of the rules as he
talked about them surrounded by
Cabinet secretaries, House re-
publicans and supporters. He
said they would allow consumers
to “I assume get résumés on
doctors, see who you like.” There
is no physician-rating compo-
nent of either regulation.
At one point, he said the hospi-
tal-rating rule “is kicking in im-
mediately. It will really get going... this coming year.”
The rule originally was pro-
posed to take effect in January
but was postponed for a year
after industry outcry. It requires
disclosure of all standard charg-
es, which include the amount a
hospital is willing to accept in
cash from patients, as well as the
rates negotiated with insurers.
All the information must be in-
cluded in a computerized file
organized by diagnostic codes.
The 300 services that the admin-
istration is classifying as “shop-
pable” must also be accessible in
a format easy for consumers to
read.
Nickels said the disclosure re-
quirements are more extensive
than the administration pro-
posed this summer. They now
compel hospitals to disclose the
privately negotiated rate for eachservice for each insurer, as well as
the maximum and minimum
rates per insurer.
“They’ve piled on,” he said.
The health insurance industry
joined hospitals in denouncing
both rules friday, although it did
not talk of lawsuits.
Any attempt to improve price
transparency should focus on giv-
ing patients information about
out-of-pocket costs and “encour-
age — not undermine — competi-
tive negotiations to lower pa-
tients’ and consumers’ costs and
premiums,” matt Eyles, president
of America’s Health Insurance
Plans, a trade group, said in a
statement. “Neither of these rules
— together or separately — satis-
fies these principles.”
Scott Serota, president of the
Blue Cross Blue Shield Associa-
tion, said in a statement that
publishing negotiated rates for
services “may have negative, un-
intended consequences — includ-
ing price increases — as clinicians
and medical facilities could see in
the negotiated payments a road
map to bidding up prices.”
During the news briefing, Azar
called such predictions “a ca-
nard.”
He said the administration did
not estimate the potential sav-
ings from requiring rate disclo-
sures because “we’ve never expe-
rienced this level of transparency
before.” But he gave an anecdotal
example, saying mrI prices de-
creased by about 20 percent in
New Hampshire after more pub-
lic information about their costs
was provided.
S eema Verma, administrator
of HHS’s Centers for medicare
and medicaid Services, mini-
mized the cost of the require-
ments to hospitals. “It’s a very
tiny percentage of their overall
revenue, less than 1 percent,” s he
said in response to a question.
Nickels called the estimate “lu-
dicrous. It certainly will cost
more.”
[email protected]Trump issues rules forcing hospitals, insurers to reveal cost of health care
Trade groups say they’ll
challenge r equirement
to show negotiated ratesBill o'leary/the Washington post
President trump attends an announcement Friday of his plan to make the cost of health care more
transparent. “I don’t know if the hospitals are going to like me anymore with this,” he said.we’re in, I’m pretty shocked.
Truth matters. Truth still mat-
ters,” Assistant U.S. Attorney mi-
chael marando told jurors.
While Stone maintained that
none of his WikiLeaks outreach
was successful, prosecutors sug-
gested that was not so certain.
They pointed to an email from
writer and Stone acquaintance
Jerome Corsi, saying: “Word is
friend in embassy plans 2 more
dumps.... Impact planned to be
very damaging.”
Corsi referred to WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange, who had
been living under house arrest at
the Ecuadoran Embassy in Lon-
don since 2012.
Corsi says he rejected a plea
offer from the special counsel and
was never charged with a crime.
He h as denied having any contact
with WikiLeaks, saying as Stone
did that he was guessing based on
Assange’s public statements.
Stone did not testify during the
trial, which began with jury selec-
tion Nov. 5. Instead jurors saw
videos of his television appear-
ances and heard scratchy audio of
his testimony before the House
committee.
The defense argued that
Stone’s voluntary testimony, in
which he offered to follow up
with more details about a jour-
nalist he described as his sole
intermediary with WikiLeaks,
showed his guilelessness. “This
was not the voice of a man who
was trying to lie, to mislead,”
rogow said.
But jurors also saw texts in
which Stone used vulgarity and
threats to pressure that person,
comedian and talk show host
randy Credico, to back up his
version of events.
“You are a rat. A stoolie,” he
wrote. “... Prepare to die.”
Stone’s reputation as a dirty
trickster who courts attention,
good or bad, left him a fringe
figure in the republican Party
until his friend Trump ran for
president.
“roger is an agent provoca-
teur,” Bannon, Trump’s former
chief strategist, told jurors as he
testified for the government
about Stone’s e xchanges with him
over WikiLeaks’ contact and the
campaign’s interest. “He’s an ex-
pert in the tougher side of poli-
tics.” Trump was such a long shot,
Bannon said, that the campaign
had to “use every tool in the
toolbox.”
Stone himself explained his
philosophy in a clip from his
House testimony played for ju-
rors. Quoting the writer Gore
Vidal, he said, “Never pass up an
opportunity to have sex or appear
on television.”
Not one juror smiled.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]ing, the defense urged jurors to
reframe the question from
whether Stone lied to whether
that mattered, asserting that his
hectic efforts to get information
from WikiLeaks never amounted
to anything.
“So much of this case deals
with that question that you need
to ask... so what?” defense attor-
ney Bruce rogow said.
Stone’s defense repeated his
position that there was “no collu-
sion” with russia on the presi-
dential race and thus any of
Stone’s misstatements, as his at-
torneys cast them, about his
WikiLeaks pursuits were incon-
sequential. They portrayed their
client as hapless and merely en-
gaging in his usual political chica-
nery. Stone has played on the
edge of politics for decades and
was first investigated by the fBI
during Watergate.
“There was nothing illegal
about the campaign being inter-
ested in information that
WikiLeaks was going to be send-
ing out,” rogow said.
The attacks prompted a pas-
sionate defense from prosecutors
— of mueller’s probe and of the
importance of facts.
“If that’s the state of affairs thatProsecutors buttressed the wit-
ness testimony with call and mes-
sage records, which they said
helped show that Stone’s claims
to the House Intelligence Com-
mittee were false.
In hopes of keeping Stone out
of prison, his defense team urged
jurors to treat his case as a refer-endum not on him but on muel-
ler’s entire russia investigation.
Stone’s attorneys conceded
that a raft of emails, texts and
other extensive documentation
showed him claiming inside in-
formation on WikiLeaks’ releases
and wanting to get even more
that could be relayed to the
Trump campaign. But in its clos-would soon be the Clinton cam-
paign official’s “time in the bar-
rel.”
Donna Brazile, a former chair
of the Democratic National Com-
mittee, which also had its emails
hacked, tweeted that she was
“pleased,” adding, “Everyone who
aided, exploited and used hacked,
stolen DNC emails and other data
from #WikiLeaks, should learn
from this saga.”
In arguments and testimony
over the past two weeks, prosecu-
tors revealed a series of phone
calls at critical times in 2016
among Stone, Trump and some of
the highest-ranking officials in
the Trump campaign: Stephen K.
Bannon, manafort and Gates.
Gates and Bannon took the
witness stand, describing how the
campaign viewed Stone as a sort-
of conduit to WikiLeaks who
claimed — even before the rus-
sian hacking was known — to
have insider information. Gates
testified that he overheard a
phone call in which Trump
seemed to discuss WikiLeaks
with Stone, calling into question
the president’s assertion to muel-
ler’s o ffice that he did not remem-
ber talking about the organiza-
tion with his longtime friend.alongside public hearings in
Democrats’ impeachment inqui-
ry into whether the president
tried to pressure his Ukrainian
counterpart to investigate a po-
tential 2020 opponent, former
vice president Joe Biden. Sen.
Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), the
highest-ranking Senate Demo-
crat, said in a statement that the
jury’s decision “sends a powerful
and timely message to President
Trump and all House and Senate
witnesses — past, present, and
future — that lying to Congress,
witness tampering, and obstruc-
tion of Congress are crimes and
those who commit crimes do so at
their own peril.”
Stone’s political foes and those
whose messages were hacked and
released celebrated the convic-
tion.
“Just about to take off on a long
transatlantic flight in a middle
coach seat. I think I will just sit
back, relax, and enjoy it,” f ormer
Clinton campaign chairman John
Podesta wrote on Twitter, affixing
a link to an article about Stone
being found guilty. Podesta’s
emails were hacked by the rus-
sian government, and Stone fa-
mously predicted — before the
emails were released — that iting for feb. 6 and allowed him to
remain free until then. Stone
faces a legal maximum penalty of
50 years in prison — 20 years for
the witness tampering charge
and five years for each of the
other counts, although a first
offender would face far less time
under federal sentencing guide-
lines.
Stone’s indictment was the last
brought by special counsel rob-
ert S. mueller III, revealing im-
portant details about the Trump
campaign’s keen interest in com-
puter files hacked by russia and
made public by the anti-secrecy
group WikiLeaks. He was ac-
cused of lying to Congress and
tampering with a witness, an
associate whom prosecutors said
Stone threatened in an attempt to
prevent the man from cooperat-
ing with lawmakers.
Stone joins a long line of
Trump advisers and confidants
who have either been convicted
or pleaded guilty in connection
with the special counsel probe,
including former Trump cam-
paign chairman Paul manafort,
former deputy campaign chair-
man rick Gates, former national
security adviser michael flynn,
former Trump lawyer michael
Cohen and former campaign ad-
viser George Papadopoulos.
Though prosecutors sought to
prove only that Stone had lied to
Congress, they asserted that his
motive for the falsehoods was
protecting Trump from embar-
rassment — and thus made the
president and his campaign a key
component in their case.
Trump seized on the verdict to
take aim at a bevy of his political
opponents, as well as law enforce-
ment and intelligence officials
who were involved in the investi-
gation of his campaign.
“So they now convict roger
Stone of lying and want to jail
him for many years to come. Well,
what about Crooked Hillary,
Comey, Strzok, Page, mcCabe,
Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff,
ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the
others, including even mueller
himself? Didn’t they lie?” Trump
tweeted. “A double standard like
never seen before in the history of
our Country?”
The Justice Department in-
spector general has alleged that
former acting fBI director An-
drew mcCabe lied to investiga-
tors exploring a media disclosure
in a case that is now being exam-
ined by federal prosecutors in
Washington. But there seems to
be no basis for Trump’s sugges-
tion that the other people he
referenced could be accused
criminally of lying.
Stone’s trial re-energized dis-
cussions of russian interference
in the 2016 election; it occurred
stone from A
Stone found guilty of lying about 2016 campaign activities
Jose luis Magana/associated press
Roger stone and his wife, nydia, leave federal court in Washington. stone’s trial involved claims that he made in 201 7 testimony to the
House Intelligence Committee, which was investigating Russian efforts to help Donald trump in the 201 6 election.“If that’s the state of
affairs that we’re in, I’m
pretty shocked. Truth
matters. Truth still
matters.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael
Marando, addressing jurorsUPLOADED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws