Subscribe (RSS)Tom Daschle Will Be the Next Health and Human Services Secretary. An early supporter of Obama, Daschle endorsed the president-elect in February 2007 and was tapped to oversee Obama’s health transition team.
As Health and Human Services chief, Daschle will be responsible for helping set health care policy. He supports a government-funded insurance program for the nation’s uninsured.
Daschle has also been the head of the health care working group in the Obama transition team. Democratic officials shied away from a term some are throwing around — “health care czar” — but say Daschle “is likely to play a leading role in the passage of health care reform and the strategy to implement it.”
Other sources lay out substantial work being done by the incoming administration to enable health care reform, all of which indicates Obama does intend to move on this issue in spite of the monumental difficulties, including financial obstacles.
The former South Dakota senator led the Senate Democrats from 1994 until he lost his re-election bid in 2004. He was minority leader for most of that time, serving as majority leader from May 2001 until January 2003, when Democrats returned to the minority after losing seats in the November 2002 midterm elections.
Organizations seeking to expand health coverage were quick to praise the selection.
Besides health reform, the next HHS secretary will deal with the growing budgetary woes of some of the nation’s critical health agencies.
One example: Years of funding that didn’t keep up with inflation means the National Institutes of Health has lost 14 percent of its buying power, said Dr. Harold Varmus, NIH’s former director and a science adviser to Obama’s campaign. That has left promising disease research without money to move forward.
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