Obama’s health care plan
How Tom Daschle for health czar shows Obama means business
Tom Daschle, Obama's pick for secretary of health and human services
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Barack Obama has tapped former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle to be his secretary of Health and Human Services, said Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic online, as well as his “point person on health care reform.” And it’s “a perfect role for Daschle.” He’s become a “true wonk” on health care in the past few years, and now he's got a shot to realize his big idea for a Federal Reserve-like “federal health board.”
That’s why Obama chose him, said Ezra Klein in The American Prospect online. You don’t pick someone with Daschle’s clout and experience getting legislation through Congress unless you’re serious about reforming health care. When Bill Clinton tried, he chose two “policy wonks”—including Hillary Clinton—with scant Washington savvy.
Daschle was a “Senate warhorse,” but he’s also “very liberal” on health care, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The bigger signal that Obama means business is that Sen. Max Baucus—who is “more moderate, and cautious”—released a “policy blueprint” that closely resembles Obama’s plan. If Democrats makes this a priority, that’s where they’ll start.
Daschle’s ideas may be “pretty far to the left,” said Patrick Edaburn in The Moderate Voice, but thanks to the “budgetary restraints” Obama is inheriting, it’s unlikely he’ll be able to try them out. Picking Daschle may be “a sop to the left”—when Obama fails to enact universal health care, he can point to Daschle and “say he tried.”
Show: Oldest | Newest
13 Comments
Posted by Glenn in CA, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 11:31 am No...if it fails again it won't be Obama's nor Daschle's fault but once again the obstructionist right and big business interests.
Posted by Jesica, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 1:19 pm Glenn, please get a clue. If you honestly do your research on countries that offer 'free' healthcare, things get out of control. Hawaii tried it and lasted all of 7 months. I live in ND and constantly see Canadians in our hospitals/clinics (two of my cousins are nurses) Britian now pays for hymen reattachment to Mideastern girls being sent back for arranged marriages. They also paid for IVF for an Indian couple that abandoned the twin babies when they turned out to be girls. there ARE existing programs in the US for people too poor to buy health insurance. for the rest of us it is our civic duty, don't kid yourself
Posted by Kam, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 3:44 pm Jesica, it's impossible to write and talk sensibly about the consequences of socialized medicine with those people who have only drunk the liberal kool-aid. Somehow they never hear or read about Hawaii’s failed experiment in free healthcare or how Canadians and Europeans come to the US if they want timely medical care. They don’t understand that when everyone is entitled, some will fall by the wayside due to limited availability of doctors and nurses. This is especially true when BO adds the mandatory care for 12 – 20 million illegal aliens to our healthcare system. Socialized medicine can’t force people to go to medical and nursing school so treatment and care will have to be rationed, just as it is in other countries. Doctors and nurses are already in limited availability due to outrageous insurance charges for malpractice. To reiterate your information that there are free and near-free medical programs is important. Pharmaceutical companies give away millions of dollars in free prescriptions to people who need but can’t afford the medicine. Unfortunately until the uninformed and illiterate destroy the greatest medical system in the world, they won’t be happy. They refuse to learn about it and only speak from their hard-headed, see no truth, dementia.
Posted by dc, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 4:15 pm The spin doesn't matter anymore. Yipeee! We have a real president.
Posted by Kam, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 4:19 pm I forgot. Dems call truth and facts...spin, after their greatest spin-master, BC. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts, and that is what scares the kool-aid drinkers.
Posted by Susan, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 4:19 pm the government runs the post office so well, now we want them to run health care, if you want something shipped guaranteed it goes private. State health care is continually broke, how does that translate nationally? my neighbors have their whole lives government covered, five generations, not a job in sight. they smoke, drink and are obese at 25, our tax dollars at work. becoming a doc is incredibly difficult and expensive, who would want to when the poli/phsy majors who spend their lives talking will plan their careers for them?
Posted by juan, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 5:41 pm this is the only country in the world where you can get a non emergency MRI or CT scan on the same day or day after it is ordered...that has to come to a stop. Deluxe medicine has to come to an end in America. There has to be a stop to unproven new technology.Super expensive. Limit malpractice...so many things that are responsible for unaffordable healthcare.
Posted by Kam, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 9:35 pm Juan, I have a great idea. In order to avoid all those new fangled medical procedures and new technology, why don't the Hispanics get treatment from their curanderos (spell??) and the Native Americans from their witch doctors? That would ease up the western medical burden. My sister was one of those non-emergency CTs to which you refer. Thank God they got her in the next day because she had the onset of a rapidly growing cancer that would have killed her within a month. Some people think only of themselves when they write and not of others who may need the services to live. Juan, you understand that those new discoveries include the stem cell research that everyone has been asking to be increased?
Post a Comment