Hundreds of experts in and out of government have been enlisted to produce President's Clinton's health-care proposals, but the parent task force headed by Hillary Rodham Clinton has yet to convene - and, for now, can't legally do so.
The special panel headed by the first lady includes a half-dozen Cabinet members and the White House's top budget, economics and domestic policy advisers.But it has never actually met, according to a deposition last week by Ira Magaziner, the White House aide in charge of completing work by May.
Moreover, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth on Wednesday barred the task force from conducting official business until Clinton files a formal charter for it, including its projected costs, with Congress. But Lamberth said the various working groups can continue to meet in relative secrecy.
Once a charter is filed, task force meetings to get information must be open, the judge ruled. Task force meetings where the actual recommendations for Clinton are put together can be closed, he said, but advance notice of them must still be given.
Administration officials anticipated little problem complying.
Meanwhile, the real work of preparing Clinton's blueprint is under way in the working groups - more than two dozen of them. They meet late into the evening almost daily at the Old Executive Office Building, at the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department and elsewhere around town.
Their deliberations are closed to most outsiders, including the lobbyists and leaders from hundreds of health interest groups. But they are open to key congressional aides, representatives of the National Governors Association and other insiders.
Magaziner is a friend of Clinton from their days as Rhodes scholars and a business consultant from Rhode Island. Judy Feder, who headed Clinton's health transition team, works closely with Magaziner as a top deputy to HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala.
Magaziner and his aides have held dozens of briefings in the Old Executive Office Building for interest groups to solicit their views.
The charges of secrecy rankle Clinton officials.
"This is the most inclusive and open attempt to write legislation that a White House has (ever) undertaken," said Robert Boorstin, a task force spokesman.
In the past, the White House would have "three white guys sit in a room with one lobbyist, and they write a piece of legislation," said Boorstin. "We were determined to do business in a new and better way."
The powerful American Medical Association complained last week about its exclusion from the working groups.