President-elect Barack Obama signalled what is being viewed as a strong commitment to health-care reform Nov 19 by choosing former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to head the federal department of Health and Human Services. Ron Pollack, executive director of the health reform advocate group Families US said Daschle’s naming is “the best news possible for those who want to achieve meaningful health care reform”. He added, “Senator Daschle has a deep commitment to securing high-quality, affordable healthcare for everyone in our nation. His new leadership position confirms that the incoming Obama Administration has made health care reform a top and early priority for action in 2009″.

After Senate confirmation, Daschle would oversee the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health.

During the transition, Daschle is heading Obama’s health-care working group.

Although the economic crisis is expected to slow work on health care reform, Capitol Hill is starting to prepare for the process. Key health legislator Edward Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts, appointed former presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton to chair a task force on health insurance reform.

Kennedy, who chairs the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, also established two other health related panels, one on prevention and public health and another on quality of care. Kennedy and other lawmakers are working on health reform legislation for consideration early next year. Several versions being developed take an approach similar to that outlined by Obama, which builds on employer-based insurance systems.

In what some see as a stepping stone to more comprehensive reform, Congress is expected to pass an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program early next year. Obama is a strong supporter of the programme and is expected to support extending it. Other health measures expected early in an Obama administration are executive orders expanding stem-cell research options and reversal of a policy that limits funding to some international family groups.

Pressure on Obama to stick to other pledges also is building. A rally was planned for Nov 20 by AIDS activists at the Obama transition office to urge him to “fulfill [his] campaign promises by developing and implementing a comprehensive, transparent and attainable national AIDS strategy, including reforms to HIV prevention, treatment, care, housing and global AIDS policies” within his first 100 days in office. 

In global health, advocates are not expecting much in the way of new money, but are pushing for full funding and broadening of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Development and global health experts also urging reform of US foreign assistance including a revitalisation of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In a Nov 10 letter to Obama, a group calling itself the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network called for creation of an “elevated, empowered, consolidated and streamlined US development agency” as a “top foreign policy priority” and empowering a single individual with responsibility over the now separate entities of USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and PEPFAR.

A strengthened, more coordinated US development strategy has been called for not only by humanitarian and development experts, but also by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Last year, he urged “a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security-diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civil action and economic reconstruction and development”.

Nellie Bristol

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 3:34 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.