News

Update: bizjournals.com/columbus

“A group with seemingly competing interests – hospital executives, government health officials, private physicians, an insurance salesman, a consumer advocate – found plenty of common ground Tuesday when discussing health-care reform ideas to send to President-elect Barack Obama.”

Washington Post

“Dolly Sweet, 77, has battled cancer more than once. She’s a fighter. But when her doctor recently prescribed a medication that cost $35,000 a year, she felt she had no choice.

“I canceled the medicine,” she said matter-of-factly to former senator Thomas A. Daschle, President-elect Barack Obama’s top health adviser, who had come to the fire station here on a quest for “fresh ideas” on improving U.S. medical care.

“I wonder if you could talk to the drug companies,” Sweet asked Daschle. “That’s more than my Social Security.”

“Daschle, seated on a metal folding chair with pen in hand and videographer in tow, symbolically kicked off the incoming administration’s effort to revamp health care with a grass-roots event that not-so-coincidentally mimicked the types of gatherings that Obama drew on to build support for his presidential candidacy.

“It’s stories like that that can make a huge difference as we try to persuade members of Congress and others about the importance of trying to make the system better,” Daschle told Sweet.

“Even before taking office or introducing concrete policy proposals, the administration-in-waiting is moving to build public support around the broad notion that the U.S. health system needs an overhaul. To Washington veterans, the approach may seem backward, or even naive, but Obama is betting that the energetic, technology-savvy supporters who fueled his candidacy will act as a potent counterbalance to the traditionally powerful special interests that have defeated similar reform efforts.” (Emphasis added)

Source: Washington Post, December 30, 2008