Advocacy organizations run by major political donors were given an inside and publicly undisclosed role in shaping healthcare policy under former President Joe Biden, previously unreported government records show.
Emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the Public Health Reform Alliance and shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner show that top Biden administration officials turned to Arnold Ventures and the Commonwealth Fund to advise them on health policy and provided them with access to power brokers at private dinners and happy hours. A Washington Examiner review of campaign finance records found that the leadership of both philanthropies has collectively donated millions of dollars to Democratic political efforts over the years, in some cases to Biden.
“Federal agencies are supposed to be independent of everyone and everything but the president and the law,” PHRA Director Martin Hoyt told the Washington Examiner. “Ethical rules and statutes demand that outsiders — in this case, almost insiders, well-connected with back-channel access and ideologically simpatico — don’t have more say than taxpayers in federal government policy. That doesn’t seem to have made a difference to the Biden administration. I hope the new administration understands that some of these Biden appointees have burrowed into the career ranks.”
Arnold Ventures and the Commonwealth Fund’s access went straight to the top in the Biden administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as then-CMS Director Meena Seshamani made herself available to both groups.
