Health Care Community Discussions

A few days after the election, the New York Times ran an article that included the following “Health Care – An Overhaul Will Have to Wait.” Today President-Elect Obama announced Senator Tom Daschle as Secretary of Health and Human Services AND Director of the [new] White House Office of Health Reform. Obama said “the time has come this year in this administration to modernize our health care system for the 21st century…If we want to overcome our economic challenges we must also finally address our health care challenges.” Perhaps health care will not have to wait after all.

Obama and Daschle intend to “make health care reform an open and inclusive process…to bring Americans into the conversation from the grass roots up.” To that end they are encouraging us to hold Health Care Community Discussions and to invite friends, family and colleagues to participate. And so I decided to do just that. Tom Daschle will be attending some of the Health Care Community Discussions and when I filled out the form on www.change.gov I made a compelling case for him to be at mine. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know if he’ll be there and I’ll let you know how it went.