Far from pulling back on his pledge to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday reasserted that commitment, saying the economic downturn makes major changes more imperative instead of less.
“The time is now to solve this problem,” Obama said at a Chicago news conference where he announced that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle would head his health-care team. “It’s not something that we can sort of put off because we’re in an emergency. This is part of the emergency.”
If successful, Obama will have achieved a goal that has eluded presidents since Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House.
Obama, who last month offered Daschle a post in his administration, said he planned to nominate the South Dakota Democrat to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and to head up a new White House Office of Health Reform.
Obama said Daschle’s deputy at the White House health office will be Jeanne Lambrew, who worked on health care in the Clinton White House and co-authored a book with Daschle on health-care reform that Obama called “groundbreaking.”
The president-elect has provided few details about what his health-care reform proposal would include. And he declined to outline how his administration would pay for an overhaul that some estimate could cost more than $100 billion a year.
Obama did raise the prospect of reviewing payments to private insurers who provide coverage to Americans enrolled in Medicare. Federal payments to insurers participating in the Medicare Advantage program are growing rapidly at the same time that questions are being raised about the effectiveness of the private insurance plan.
In addition, he suggested that his administration would work hard to contain health-care costs, pointing to improvements in the technology used to handle patient records and other medical information as one area of potential savings.
Obama’s comments about the need for action, coupled with his selection of Daschle, were seen by some interest groups as an indication that Obama would not back away from his campaign promises to expand insurance coverage, hold down costs and improve the quality of care.
“It signals that the incoming administration intends to prioritize comprehensive health-care reform,” said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s Washington lobbying arm. Fifteen years ago, insurers played a critical role in defeating health-care reform.
As the nation’s economic environment continues to deteriorate, a new effort to tackle health-care reform will have to compete with other priorities, including a multibillion-dollar stimulus plan Obama says he wants to enact early next year.
No major reform campaign has been undertaken in Washington since President Bill Clinton’s health-care push collapsed in 1994 amid fierce opposition from interest groups and some members of Congress.
But in recent months, a broad array of business leaders, health-care officials and consumer groups have been working to build momentum for overhauling a system that leaves more than 46 million people without insurance and whose costs are weakening many businesses.
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nlevey@tribune.com
Gathering familiar faces
See Obama’s picks to fill his Cabinet and other posts at chicagotribune.com/cabinet
Chicago Jews key backers in Obama’s political rise. Report leads additional coverage of president-elect, PAGES 47-57
