Tom Daschle, the former Senator who will be Barack Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, shares a lot of his new boss's views but in his recent book on health reform he goes beyond Obama's agenda, according to the Wall Street Journal health blog. In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, Daschle argues that all Americans should be required to buy health insurance—a key difference from Obama, who argues that only children should be required to have health insurance. Daschle also calls for the creation a Federal Health Board. The board wouldn’t regulate the private insurance market, but it would have power over federal healthcare programs.
The effort to overhaul the nation's health system will begin in 2009 with one clear advantage over previous attempts: A wide variety of interest groups are rooting for it to succeed. That is a stark contrast to the last big healthcare initiative in the early 1990s, when many of the same groups helped block any major change. In addition, Barack Obama's choice of Tom Daschle, a former Senate Majority Leader, as Secretary of Health and Human Services, puts a skilled navigator of Capitol Hill in charge of the president-elect's bid to establish universal healthcare.
Thomas A. Daschle, a former Senate majority leader, will be nominated as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and will take on a broader role as the administration's health policy chief, said several sources close to the transition process. The selection of Daschle is recognition of the central role he played in Obama's political ascendancy and a signal that the incoming president wants an experienced Washington insider to shepherd comprehensive health legislation through Congress.
Leaders of some large academic medical centers and community hospitals called for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to examine how Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital, and a few other institutions are able to obtain higher payments from health insurers even though there is often no demonstrated difference in the quality of the care delivered by those hospitals. Hospital executives and state officials say the practice of insurers paying substantially higher fees to a handful of Boston medical centers is imperiling some rival hospitals and distorting the greater Boston healthcare market.
The health insurance industry said it will support a national healthcare overhaul that requires them to accept all customers, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions. But in return it wants lawmakers to mandate that everyone buy coverage. Lawmakers have signaled their intent to craft healthcare legislation early in 2009. The new position taken by the insurance industry, which helped sink President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal health coverage in 1994, could ease the way for passage of such legislation.
Washington health officials said they will start tracking MRSA hospital cases and will require hospitals to use federal guidelines in controlling the potentially fatal, drug-resistant bacteria. Department of Health Secretary Mary Selecky emphasized her agency's ongoing actions in controlling the germ. She said hospital tracking of MRSA cases began for the first time in October, through changes in a uniform tracking system. She said her department will analyze the data for trends.