Administration Acts to Settle Suit on Release of Health Group Records
The Clinton Administration said Thursday that it will enter private talks this afternoon aimed at settling a lawsuit over whether it must publicly release the records of its 1993 health care working group.
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and White House adviser Ira Magaziner led the 500-plus-member group’s deliberations that led to the President’s health care plan.
The Assn. of American Physicians and Surgeons, the American Council for Health Care Reform and the National Legal Policy Center are seeking hundreds of thousands of transcripts, drafts, minutes and other documents generated by the working group.
The three organizations contend federal law requires any such group to meet in public if it includes non-government members who may have their own agendas.
Government lawyer Mark Stern has argued that the working group was too loosely structured to be covered by the federal advisory panel law.
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