Obama's Health Care Team
It's worth noting that all of the major players on Obama's health care team are women. Today, the president names Kathleen Sebelius to be HHS Secretary and Nancy Ann DeParle, a friend, to be the White House health care czar. Two other pivotal players are Neera Tanden who was HIllary Clinton's top domestic policy advisor and is a counselor at HHS and is constantly in meetings at the White House. Same for Jeanne Lambrew who has been perched at HHS even though she's deputy director of the White House office. Look for more players in the coming weeks as Sebelius staffs up at HHS.
The good news here is that everyone's worked together. Tanden and Lambrew are both alumni of the Clinton White House and the Center for American Progress. Melody Barnes, the domestic policy adviser, is also a CAP alumnus.
One of the interesting things to watch in the coming weeks is how the White House woos Charles Grassley. Can they get the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee to be supportive of some of their principles. It would seem unlikely. But the presence of Bob Dole at this morning's ceremony suggests a big push in that direction. It helps that Nancy Ann DeParle is also close with Jim Cooper, the Tennessee Democratic Congressman who is one of the House's biggest budget hawks. (DeParle was the equivalent of HHS secretary in Tennessee. DeParle and Cooper are both Rhodes Scholars.) Cooper balked at the stimulus plan but he just might play ball on a health care package, say insiders.
It's going to be a very interesting spring.
Josh
Matt
Eric
Brian
Are any of them backing single payer or has the debated ended before it started?
March 2, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that debate has ended -- for now -- but that the key debate in this whole thing will be whether Americans have a Medicare-style government-provided health care option to choose from.
The health insurance industry is trying to cut a deal, saying they'll back health care reform and accept a requirement that they enroll all applicants regardless of health history, so long as health insurance is mandated on all individuals. Unsaid, but implicit, I think, is that private insurers would have the field to themselves, with no Medicare-style plan to compete against. In other words, I believe they will fight against any health care reform bill that includes a Medicare-style plan in the mix.
My view of this -- and ironically, it's probably shared by the health insurance industry -- is that having a government-provided health care option is a back door to single payer. I think that over time, so many people would choose this option, because of its lower costs and less administrative BS, that it would become America's de facto or perhaps even de jure health plan. That's I think it's so critically important and it's also why the health insurance industry will fight to the death to stop it. Which is why Americans have to organize and mobilize around this.
March 2, 2009 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe Howard Dean has said much the same thing. The public option is essential. Without it what do we really have but a health care system totally at the mercy of the insurance lobby?
March 2, 2009 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's rare I favorably quote Charles Krauthammer ("rare' as in never before/never again), but I hope he's got this right:
"Obama wants to be to universal health care what Lyndon Johnson was to Medicare. Obama has publicly abandoned his once-stated preference for a single-payer system as in Canada and Britain. But that is for practical reasons. In America, you can't get there from here directly.
Instead, Obama will create the middle step that will lead ultimately and inevitably to single-payer. The way to do it is to establish a reformed system that retains a private health-insurance sector but offers a new government-run plan (based on benefits open to members of Congress) so relatively attractive that people voluntarily move out of the private sector, thereby starving it. The ultimate result is a system of fully socialized medicine. This will probably not happen until long after Obama leaves office. But he will be rightly recognized as its father."
Funny how CK finds it inevitable that the goverment will provide superior service at a reduced cost, and thereby destroy our current system. So much for the infallibility of the free-market, I guess.
March 3, 2009 12:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bingo! That's it in a nutshell.
The other thing I would point out about Krauthammer is that he's repeating the right-wing lie when he writes, "The ultimate result is a system of fully socialized medicine." Of course, Medicare and any single-payer system like Canada's is not socialized medicine. Doctors are privately-employed, government simply acts in the role that insurance companies have today. Real socialized medicine is what they have in the U.K., and no one is talking about doing that here on a national basis. Interestingly, however, it's exactly what we have right here and right now at the VA -- and the result is a system that provides high-quality care, that innovates (all records are electronic), and that costs less, especially considering the health care needs of its patients.
March 3, 2009 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Conservatives absoutely hate it whan the government is allowed to do good things that people like.
When my conservative friends rail against "government benefits" I always point out the origin of the work "benefit"- from the Latin "bene" meaning good. Benefits are good things. That's why people like them. Why are you against good things?
March 3, 2009 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink