The new president's plans: Stealth care

"Barack Obama’s health agenda has been harmed by Tom Daschle’s fallWAS Tom Daschle so uniquely gifted that his departure from the twin posts of health secretary and White House health tsar must now set back Mr Obama’s health-reform efforts? In the short term, the answer is yes. Mr Daschle’s unusual strengths as both an elder statesman of the Senate and a serious policy wonk meant that he, more than anyone, might have been able to get the job done. His fall is a pity, because the Republicans are already unsheathing their knives. The president has included a handful of health measures in his big stimulus package, such as the temporary expansion of health insurance for the unemployed; but these mostly sensible steps are already being denounced as socialist medicine by stealth. When Mr Obama signed a law expanding SCHIP, a health scheme that covers children in poor families, on February 4th, his opponents loudly decried it. ..." (2009-2-5)
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