Obama is Committed to Health Reform
Posted December, 12 2008 by arianne
In yesterday’s press conference, President-elect Obama officially welcomed Tom Daschle, Secretary for Health and Human Services.
In his address, Daschle highlighted the administrations new website—change.gov–encouraging people to visit the site and write in their thoughts on health reform.
In other news-Single Payer NY issued a press statement calling on the President elect to propose a single-payer health care for all system.
1 Comments
Arthur Springer • Dec.30.2008 at 10:59:am
Wall St. Journal 12.30.2008
Not since David Baltimore’s eloquent defense of unlimited health care spending to save lives have I read as vigorous a defense of that principle as Ms.Pipes has given us in her 10 myths statement and this Wall St. Journal op-ed column. Forget the fact that her home base, the Pacific Research Institute, is endorsed by Margaret Thatcher and often sounds somewhat to the right of the far right. Nobody today is standing up for the right to life outside the Roman Catholic church. But life is the ultimate value, not statistical projections about budgets. Can it be quantified? Can it be priced? Not easily or as casually as the health policy wonks would like it. Perhaps not at all. I was supposed to be dead about ten years ago, according to the Social Security Administration’s disability actuaries. I am alive because I am lucky to live in New York City, where there is an abundance of state=of=the=art-health care for those who know how to find it. The people who are in a tizzy about health care costs tend to be affluent health care politicians without MDs and with the best health care their wealth can buy. No one in his right mind can take them seriously so long as they do not put themselves and their families on the line, and lead the way into the grim health care programs they propose for others. Finally, the One Big HMO Nation Ms. Pipes describes was proposed about 1990 in Oregon and found to be in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act by the first Bush Administration. The key to that program was a long list of health care problems the program would not cover. It is rumored for example that Mr. Daschle favors limiting end-of-life care to about $20,000, less than the cost of two days in an ICU at most hospitals in the US. But Mr. Daschle apparently has not told us whether he would subject himself and his family to such a rule. Along with Natalie Manes, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks hit song “”I’m Not Ready to Back Down,” I’m waiting.
Arthur Springer
Lay Advocate for People With DIsabilities