During confirmation hearings this week for sormer South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle voices as varied as Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Bob Dole (R-KS), came together to sing the praises of Daschle to lead the department of Health and Human Services, a department widely seen as the focal point of the new administration’s promised action on health care reform.
Senator Kennedy called Mr. Daschle “the perfect man for the job”, while Mr. Dole praised his “thorough understanding” of the issues involved in the huge undertaking that is the reform of the U.S. health care system.
Considering that the Senate is, more than anything else, a club with membership privileges which (for the most part) go beyond partisan politicking, Mr. Daschle’s nomination seems to be all but assured.
Those who are very interested in issues such as single payer insurance, can take heart in the knowledge that Mr. Daschle (who worked extensively on health care reform with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton) will bring the spirit and understanding of the issues involved in health care reform that will be definitely needed in the weeks ahead.
More importantly, Mr. Daschle will have to convince an un-friendly republican group, which views the incoming president’s plans for a public health coverage plan to compete with private insurance companies as an enemy of capitalism.
Whether the former senator’s standing on Capitol Hill will be enough to convince Republicans (and their supporters and lobbyists in the business world ) remains to be seen. The incoming administration has pledged to fix the husrting U.S. health care system once and for all (a task which has been tried before), and Mr. Daschle definitely appears to be right man in the right place at the right time.
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———-The author, Jonathan Krakowski, writes a regular column for Life Insurance In-Depth, an award-winning insurance information blog.
He also writes regularly about Florida auto insurance.