President-Elect Barack Obama is expected to announce Thursday that he has selected former Democratic Senator leader Tom Daschle as his secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle will be in charge of tackling what is expected to be a major issue of the Obama presidency: health care.
As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Daschle faces the daunting task of restructuring America's health care system. Obama has made it clear that healthcare reform is at the top of his agenda, although the economic crisis has made that along with most other issues increasingly complicated.
"Providing quality affordable health care for all Americans is one of my top priorities for this country because our long-term fiscal prospects will have a hard time improving as long as sky-rocketing health care costs are holding us all down," Obama said in a statement earlier this month.
Currently, nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured, and the existing healthcare system is behind that of many other developed countries. An analysis published last month revealed that the price-tag of Obama's health care system revamp will total $75 billion. The Obama plan would insure 95 percent of Americans at an average price of $2,500 per newly insured person, PriceWaterhouseCoopers said in a report.
Although the starting price tag is $75 billion, the plan will increase to $1 trillion by 2018 at a rate of $130 billion per year, the report said. The increased cost would extend health insurance to around 31 million of the current 47 million uninsured Americans - but could lead to a shortage of primary care physicians.
"Unless costs are cut, growing health care costs will increase the costs of Obama's plan dramatically over time and reduce the effectiveness of mandates," the report read. "This could make the federal costs unsustainably high."
Concerns about cost have been amplified by the hundreds of billions that the economic crisis has cost the government so far, leading to expectations that the budget deficit will double to over $1 trillion in the next year.
Due to the growing deficit and economic crisis, there is "unlikely to be any new federal money available, so health reform may require reallocation of dollars already in the health system," the report found.
Finding funding will be something Obama will have to explain, and an issue that his Secretary of Health and Human Services will also have to work at.
In addition, the report published last month found that attacking both the healthcare and economic crises at the same time could be mutually beneficial. Specifically, there could be an increase in mergers and acquisitions as a result of new health care reforms.
"The financial crisis and culminating market forces could accelerate health reform, not be a roadblock," the report read.
Daschle, the former Democratic Senate leader from South Dakota, was first elected to the senate in 1986. He stayed in Congress until 2004, when he lost a re-election bid to Republican John Thune. During his career in the Senate Daschle served as Democratic Senate leader, both when Democrats held a minority and majority.
He also served on several committees throughout his 18-year career, including the Finance committee, Veterans Committee, Indian Affairs, Ethics Committee, and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
He served 17 days as the Senate Majority Leader in January 2001, as the Democrats held a brief majority due to the fact that a new congress takes office before the new presidential administration. However, the split senate - 50 Democrats, 50 Republicans was tipped Republican when Vice-President Dick Cheney assumed his position as holder of the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
The press conference is scheduled to take place at 11:00 am ET in Chicago.
For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com