Transmission Wire

During confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill for sormer South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle voices as varied as Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Bob Dole (R-KS), joined together to sing the praises of the nominee to lead the department of Health and Human Services, a post widely seen as the focal point of the new administration’s promised action on health care reform.

Mr. Kennedy called Mr. Daschle “the perfect man for the job”, while Mr. Dole praised his “acute understanding” of the issues involved in the huge undertaking that is the reform of the U.S. health care system.

When you consider that the Senate is, more than anything else, a club with membership privileges which (most of the time) 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 energy and understanding of the issues involved in health care reform that will be sorely necessary in the months ahead.

More importantly, Mr. Daschle will have to convince an un-friendly republican delegation, which views the incoming president’s plans for a public health coverage plan to compete with private insurance companies as an abomination.

Whether the former majority leader’s standing on Capitol Hill will be enough to sway Republicans (and their supporters and lobbyists in the private sector ) remains to be seen. President-elect Obama has pledged to fix the struggling U.S. health care system once and for all (a mission which has been tried before), and Mr. Daschle indeed appears to be right man in the right place at the right time.
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———-Jonathan Krakowski writes a regular column for Life Insurance In-Depth, an award-winning insurance information blog.

He also writes regularly about California auto insurance.