He had experience in Washington, and was aggressively lobbying for health care reform.
He was clearly pro-medical IT.
Most impressive, he emphasized the central role of primary care medicine in repairing our upside down physician reimbursement system.
Naturally, he was destined to fail.
It’s unclear that it’s time to stop shopping at the “political” store, as Barbara Duck put it, and start shopping at the “smart” store. It’s also not entirely clear why Daschle withdrew, other than having a modicum of fiscal impropriety, less than many. He seemed a pretty “smart” choice to me.
I certainly hope that the NY Times is wrong, and that this doesn’t halt the momentum towards healthcare reform we’ve seen these past several weeks. As blogger KevinMD noted, OB Amy Tuteur may have said it best:
Progressives are so busy congratulating themselves on self-righteously making government off limits to anyone with questionable income tax returns that they have failed to consider what they have really done. In torpedoing the nomination of Tom Daschle, they have set back a far more important goal: the moral imperative to provide health care for all Americans.
It’s true that emphasizing well-done electronic health record and IT, a focus on quality of care + relative value delivered, and a re-incentivizing primary care medicine are too important to be held back by any individual. It’s almost impossible to imagine meaningful reform without all of the above.
But offhand, I’d say that critical trio is too important — and good help so scarce — that we can’t afford to flick away qualified, experienced, and committed candidates.
It’s a bit like the conclusion of the nuclear Air Force reported by Wired Magazine, except in reverse:
In certain corners of the military, there’s some grumbling about how impossibly hard the Air Force’s nuclear handling inspections have become. Maj. Gen. Don Alston, the Air Force’s new man at the Pentagon overseeing all things atomic, has a message for the grumblers: Suck it up.
Or as they say in marketing circles, “People don’t want to buy a drill. They want to make a hole.” The goal is to fix the system, not jockey for political bragging rights while Rome burns.
Health care reform is too mission critical to the nation’s future to get prissy.
