secretary of health & human services tom daschle

What does President-elect Obama's nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) to Secretary of Health and Human Services mean for health care reform? Families USA has a summary from January on Daschle's views of what we need to do nationally:

Here are some elements of his platform.

- Establish an autonomous oversight body for health care comparable to the Federal Reserve for our monetary sector. We need to give this group the ability to control costs, starting with chronic disease, which represents the largest block of costs to the system.

- Investments in information technology would result in quantum leaps in efficiencies and quality improvements.

- Pooling would aggregate the risks/costs for small business and individuals.

- Negotiate drug pricing. Build on and leverage the purchasing volumes that government already is responsible for.

- Prevention. Wellness, easy access and early intervention clearly saves enormous dollars.

- Comparative Effectiveness. As the Congressional Budget Office and Institute of Medicine have recently pointed out, an autonomous national institute that could use large data sets to identify the approaches that work best would clarify and unify clinical practice throughout America, and would have significant impact on both quality and cost.

- Transparency. We cannot fix our problems until we can see them more clearly.

- Medical Malpractice. Make it easier for physicians to make the best decisions, and protect them from frivolous legal actions.

- Patient-provider interactions. Take advantage of technology to smooth the flow of communications between patients and the health system.

- Universal Coverage. Increase access through health vouchers and coverage.

It's actually pretty expansive, and more impressive than I thought. Hopefully, between an expansive Daschle view, Sen. Max Baucus's universal (at least in name) proposal, and the return of Sen. Ted Kennedy to the Senate this week, signs look good for something that is a large-scale, major reform.

update: A good observation from Matt Stoller:

I guess it's good that Daschle has finally reunited health care White House policy with the Cabinet department charged with leading health care policy.