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While President-elect Barack Obama introduced Tom Daschle as his Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee, a panel of key leaders met nearby at a Washington hotel for a Business Roundtable. At the Roundtable, representatives of many of the same business, insurance and pharmaceutical interests that had scuttled the health care plan engineered by First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1994 had a change of heart. All agreed the time for health care reform has come and that prospects for adoption look good in the next Congress. Said John Castellani, the Roundtable's president, “This is not 1994” (when people had been content with the health system and its costs). Today, the budgets of families, businesses and government at all levels are being wrecked by rising health care costs, and all are demanding change. As he introduced Daschle, President-elect Obama uttered the same, simple truth: “Some may ask how, at this moment of economic challenge, we can afford to invest in reforming our health-care system….I ask how can we afford not to?” He added that “right now, small businesses across America are laying off (workers) or shutting their doors for good because of rising health care costs. Some of the largest corporations in America, including major American carmakers, are struggling to compete with foreign companies unburdened by these costs.” Making major changes to the nation's health care system still won't be easy. After all, the task involves reorganizing one-sixth of the U.S. economy and changing the way a vital service is delivered. Every single decision from the most trivial to the monumental will be controversial. Daschle's resignation and the stimulus bill's staggering costs make the task that much tougher. Daschle had seemed a shrewd choice to lead Obama’s effort — a Capitol Hill insider who recently penned a book on health-care reform with his would-be deputy, Jeanne Lambrew. By choosing Daschle, Obama had seemingly sidestepped the secret deliberations that doomed the Clinton-era reforms. Hillary Clinton's White House task force hid its work from Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department. Another advantage Obama had going for him was that the four committee chairmen handling any reform bill have strong personal motives for success. They include: Montana Senator Max Baucus, eager to get the opportunity to report out the largest bill of his more than two years as Senate Finance Committee chairman; Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who could achieve the primary goal of his Senate career; and California Rep. Henry Waxman, looking for the chance to test his legislative skill as the new chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Source: Washington Post
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Daschle
Demise Dims Health Care Reform Prospects
