Tom Daschle, President-elect Obama’s point man on the healthcare issue, is discussing the new administration’s early strategy for reforming the healthcare system.
The strategy begins with giving people the chance to highlight their concerns and experiences. Daschle invited people around the U.S. to hold what amounts to house parties from Dec. 15-31. Obama’s transition team will gather the information from those meetings and post the material on its Website. (It appears there is not yet a mechanism to share stories on the site).
By asking anybody and everybody to share their health-care experiences, Daschle is confronting one of the major criticisms of 15 years ago: that the effort to craft former President Bill Clinton’s plan for universal coverage was too secretive.
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President-elect Obama should have a behavioral economist as an adviser who is "specifically charged with translating the lessons of the behavioral revolution into real-world policies," Times columnist Leonhardt writes. The adviser would work "with Medicare officials to improve drug compliance" and think about "how health insurance choices should be presented," among other things, he writes. Leonhardt says behavioral economists are "ideally suited" to help Obama "come up with budget cuts that can reduce government spending without harming the quality of government services."
By the way, I'm developing a new website: http://www.obamadministration.com where I put a friendly user flash tool to browse the Obama Administration, relalions , cabinet, government,..etc.
Cheers
I am a registered nurse who has worked in a University health-care system, a federal health-care system, for county correctional health-care and the private sector of health-care either as a per-diem nurse or through a registry and I feel I could offer helpful insight as to where we are and where we are headed in the nursing aspects of this field. Much reform is needed but the people in charge of those reforms are clueless as to how to fix the problems because they can not see the problems without looking from the bottom up. Many administrators are trying to cover up or sugarcoat the direness of the situation and left to continue the staffing to patient ratios nation wide will become critical as more health-care members seek to get out of this profession. I love my career, but have grown to hate bedside nursing and I am not alone in these views. I would welcome the opportunity to share some observances and views with this administration in the hopes that we can really see a change that will matter not only in jobs retained but also in lives saved and reduce needless lawsuits as well. I really would welcome the dialogue with someone in this new administration who can help. Dianne Guillory
Thanks, Dianne, for sharing your story here. Have you submitted it to the Obama site (change.gov)?
Thanks for sharing, Abel. Your site and blog look interesting. I'll check back as they progress.