More than 2 months remain until the inauguration of the USA’s president-elect, but already there are signals that Barack Obama will move quickly to make important changes to the nation’s health care policy. Obama has yet to publicly name his picks for key administration posts, including secretary of Health and Human Services and commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. But members of his transition team indicated this week that once in office, president-elect Obama will likely issue executive orders reversing some Bush administration policies, including restrictions on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, and rules that limit USA-funded international family-planning groups from discussing abortion, among others.

“There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action”, John Podesta, head of Obama’s transition team, told Fox News this week.

Just days after taking office in 2001, President George W Bush issued an executive order restoring the “Mexico City Policy” adopted in 1984 by then-president Ronald Reagan, which required non-governmental organisations who receive federal funding to agree not to promote abortion as a family-planning method. The policy has become known as the global “gag rule”.

Victims of the gag rule include the United Nations Population Fund, which lost some US$200 million in funding in 2002.

Bush also banned funding in 2001 for the harvesting of new stem cells, something he and other conservatives believe immoral. The ban essentially stagnated the country’s stem-cell research industry, which has been surpassed by research in less-regulated countries like China. Earlier this year, Bush vetoed a Senate bill to remove the restrictions.

David Boddiger

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 1:30 pm and is filed under US Election, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.