As TPM reported the day Tom Daschle dropped out, Howard Dean was never in play to be the HHS Secretary and Kathleen Sebelius was a leading candidate. It looks like we’ll get Sebelius named to the HHS slot later today. As Kansas’s governor, she’s got a mixed record on health care, as the New York Times notes today. Can she fare better with the much more difficult job ahead? Interestingly, Nancy Ann DeParle, a friend and spouse of New York Times reporter Jason DeParle, seems headed for the White House health care czar job. (Daschle was originally going to hold both positions.) As the Times notes:
From 1997 to 2000, Ms. DeParle was administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Ms. DeParle has extensive experience in the business world that has prompted questions from some liberals and from some of the people who vet appointments for Mr. Obama. Ms DeParle is now or has been a director of huge health care companies including Medco Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager; Cerner, a supplier of health information technology; Boston Scientific, a medical device company; DaVita, which runs kidney dialysis centers; and Triad Hospitals.
A Rhodes Scholar and veteran of Tennessee policy and politics, she’s as well versed as anyone to take on the challenge of getting health care passed. No word if Jeanne Lambrew will stay at the White House or move on to HHS. Lambrew is the University of Texas professor who was Tom Daschle’s intellectual guru on health care issues. The two wrote a book together and she was to be his deput in the White House health care office. If she stays at the White House or goes to HHS, she’ll have huge influence. She was one of the designers of the State Childrens Health Insurance Program, SCHIP, that President Obama recently expanded.
