Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Beautiful, crisp, sunny Fall day! Fabulous event with Clinton visit. Francis and I greeted her at the South entrance of the NIH Clinical Center. Also waiting in background was Harold Varmus and Nora Volkow. Warm and engaging conversation with HRC. I showed her a picture of her and me at the Clinical Center during her first visit in Feb., 1994. I welcomed all of the dignitaries to the Masur Auditorium, said some warm words (see files) about the relationship between HRC and me and then introduced Francis Collins who introduced her. She gave a great delivery of the speech that I helped write. Overwhelmingly positive response from audience and press and bloggers immediately after. I sent in my Op-Ed to the NY Times (see files) and then went to White House for Principals Meeting in Situation Room at 3:45 PM. Present were: Hillary Clinton, Jack Lew (OMB), Denis McDonough (NSS), Chaired by Tom Donoline, Samantha Powers, Tom Frieden, Raj Shah, Eric Goosby, Gayle Smith, Ariel Pablos-Mendez, etc. We agreed upon Option #2, which is greater efficiencies to provide more $ and scale-up of non-Tx prevention as well as increasing the PEPFAR target for prevention to 6 million by 2013 and 8 million by 2015. I stressed to Tom Donoline that the POTUS should strongly call upon more involvement by other donors, particularly China. He agreed. Of note, Susan Rice teleconferenced in from NYC and she voted strongly for Option $3 (Blue Sky), which would require an additional $2.5 Billion. This is a good sound bite, but Jack Lew pointed out that given the budget situation, the POTUS would have to back off on commitments that he has already made to other programs in order to do this. Hillary pointed out that this was not tenable. She also pointed out that we needed to address the ADAP waiting lists. Amazing situation. After returning from the White House, I heard from Courtney Billet and Greg that HHS contacted us and said that although they had no problem with the Op-Ed (see above) and actually cleared us to send it to NY Times, the “White House” told HHS to have recall the Op-Ed since it is “off message”. Still not sure what they mean since State, HHS and everyone else approved it. Could be because I called for more resources as well as more “efficiencies” Another amazing situation – At around 7:00 PM, Raj Shah calls me up and asks me to call a meeting with him, Eric and me to see if we could modify the proposal that was agreed upon at Principal’s Meeting!!!.. He still insists that the POTUS needs to come out with something “different” and suggests using “pipeline” money from PEPFAR/USAID. He wanted me to broker the meeting. I contacted Eric and bless his heart, he is willing to meet. Meeting scheduled for 8:30 AM in Eric’s office tomorrow.