I discussed Daschle in less-than-flattering terms back in February when he stepped aside as Obama's nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services and overall health care "czar" amidst a sea of controversy. The nature of the controversy is described in the earlier post so I won't get into it here.
Former Democratic senators Bob Kerrey (left) and Tom DaschleTo put it mildly, neither of these gentleman are considered great progressive champions, either while serving in the senate or afterward. But the conversation was more interesting than I would have expected, and I think it's worth it to report on some of the key points, particularly since Daschle—while not a member of the administration—remains a key Obama adviser on health care with deep connections to top White House advisers.
The discussion took place the same day that Senator Max Baucus introduced his much awaited "compromise" reform bill (actually not even a bill—just a rough plan). The bill was met with a decidedly lukewarm reception from all sides and, despite supposedly representing a compromise, found absolutely no support from Republicans. However the Obama administration said it represented a good step forward and the health care industry certainly seemed to like it, leading The Washington Post to call it "a bill that may weather the blows" and end up as the basis for whatever passes eventually.
Daschle did not seem to care for at all for the Baucus plan in his remarks this evening. On several occasions he pointedly praised the four other health care reform bills—three from the House and one that came out of Teddy Kennedy's Senate HELP Committee—while leaving out any reference to the Baucus plan or explicitly referring to it as problematic.
I'm not sure if he's just out of synch with the White House on this one (for now), or if the White House is actually luke warm on the Baucus plan and wants to change it significantly, whilst mouthing relative approval in the meantime. Daschle specifically praised Kennedy's bill (actually drafted by Chris Dodd) which includes a (possibly weak) public option (according to Physicians for a National Health Program, as of a month ago there was not even a bill number for the HELP committee bill, much less a copy that could be read by the public). At any rate I was a bit surprised how down Daschle seemed on the Baucus plan given that Obama seems to be thinking of it as the main way forward.
In the above clip (apologies for video quality in both of these, I filmed them on a little camera) Daschle responds to Bob Kerrey's concern that all of the Sturm und Drang of August and beyond (death panels, townhalls, Sarah Palin, etc.) represented a failure of democracy in some fashion. Daschle basically dismissed that, blithely referencing the "noise of democracy," a dismissal which I think is wrong for two reasons. First, the Democrats and Obama lost the political momentum in a major way in the last couple of months, even for the limited reforms they were proposing, and let the crazies (Glenn Beck et. al.) take over the conversation for awhile. Second, and this isn't even what Kerrey was really getting at since he was talking about ignorance dominating the debate, the entire health care reform process is undoubtedly a failure of democracy in that large stakeholders like Big Pharma and the insurance companies have already had a huge say while the popular single-payer option was never even discussed. Daschle's treacly civics lesson above cannot paper over the basic corruption of the legislative process—particularly anything relating to a behemoth industry like health care.
The second clip here is a bit more encouraging, with Daschle arguing forcefully that "a public option is inevitable--it will happen," either now or at some point in the future, simply because it has to happen—i.e. some sort of competition from a government plan is necessary. He might be right, but a failure to get the "public option" now might also doom it for years to come and preclude further discussion of expanding governmental coverage of health care to any degree, much less to the point of a single-payer system.
Both Kerrey and Daschle threw out some interesting points in the course of the 90 minute discussion (including Q & A). Kerrey suggested that all members of Congress should be forced to participate in Medicare, both so that they would see that government funded care actually works pretty well, and have a personal interest in keeping it sound. Daschle, citing the chronic shortage of primary care physicians in the United States, suggested providing full-ride medical school scholarships to any students who agreed to work as a PCP after school, thus alleviating a student's need to go into more lucrative (but less important) medical fields in order to pay off student debt. Daschle also pointed out, in what was unfortunately one of the only references to single-payer, that over half of the doctors in the U.S. support a single-payer system, yet oddly for some reason we don't consult these key health care providers on how they think we should best change the existing system (such as it is).
Finally, as an aside, Daschle got the biggest laugh of the night when he commented, in reference to Republicans' aversion to government and government spending on anything other than defense, that the GOP members of congress will "fund anything that explodes." That was pretty funny for a former senator from South Dakota, but of course it's true of most Democrats as well.
For example, former "anti-war" candidate Obama budgeted $527 billion for defense spending in 2010, an 8% increase from 2009, and the same amount estimated as necessary by the Bush administration before it left power. It might be easier for Obama and his Democratic friends in Congress to scrounge up some money for health care if the United States was not fighting two unnecessary wars and budgeting half a trillion for the military, but that's a topic for another post.
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