President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly said that we cannot hope to fix our nation's economic crisis without addressing healthcare reform. In choosing former Sen. Tom Daschle to head the health reform effort Obama has signaled that he still intends to make this issue an important part of his term.
And according to the Los Angeles Times, he's now asking for your input:
The plan -- asking Americans to host meetings to talk about reform -- appears designed to avoid the appearance that the new administration is developing a sweeping agenda behind closed doors.
Some 10,000 people, many of them already involved in grass-roots efforts to push healthcare reform, have submitted comments on the website, according to Daschle.
The Obama team's maneuver builds on organizing techniques pioneered by liberal grass-roots groups like MoveOn.org and deployed by Obama during the presidential campaign.
It also reinforces the message that Obama has delivered since his election, that he intends to take aggressive steps to tackle the issue despite the worsening economic situation.
On December 11, 2008, President-Elect Obama officially announced in a press conference that he has chosen former Senator Tom Daschle to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and also named him the Director of a new White House Office on Health Care Reform. See the Medicare Update weblog’s post at http://tinyurl.com/6qog6y
Posted by: Michael Apolskis | December 11, 2008 at 12:42 PM