Healthcare

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), three months after withdrawing from his nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services, will be the keynote speaker at a conference being held by a pharmaceutical industry trade group.

The Read more...

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Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) was in the Senate Tuesday meeting with members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and Finance Committee about her nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

Leaving a meeting with committee chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is back in the Senate until the April recess while battling brain cancer, Sebelius gave an upbeat progress report and said she does not yet know when her confirmation hearings will be held.

"Hopefully soon," she said. "It's going well. I think I've seen about close to 40 senators so far... There's a lot of interest in health reform and a lot of interest in the agency itself, which I think is good news."

Sebelius ran into Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) at a Senate elevator, both of whom embraced her warmly and wished her luck.

- J. Taylor Rushing

AARP is naming A. Barry Rand as its new chief executive today, replacing William Novelli.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Rand, who is currently the chairman of the board of trustees at Howard University, will take over for Novelli on April 6.

AARP will flex its political muscles this year as Democrats seek to craft healthcare reform.

UPDATE: USA Today has a more comprehensive profile of Rand, who will be the AARP's first African American chief executive.

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MoveOn.org, the liberal political action group, is launching the opening shot at the health insurance industry on Wednesday with the release of a television ad.

The ad portrays patients in a waiting room of a hospital and suggests that insurance companies view patients as piles of money.

President Obama may have softened his rhetoric against the insurance industry since he took office, and Democratic lawmakers regularly meeting with insurance lobbyists, but left-leaning activists are not ready to do the same.

An ad hoc coalition of liberal activist groups plans to stage a protest Tuesday at a conference sponsored by the health insurance industry lobby.

A slew of organizations plans to raise the ruckus Tuesday at 11 a.m. outside the Ritz-Carlton, where America's Health Insurance Plans is holding its conference this week. White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag is speaking at the conference Tuesday but he'll miss all the fun because he's leaving at 9 a.m.

The roster of liberal organizations runs the gamut from huge labor unions to small activist groups but they have one thing in common: They really, really don't like health insurance companies. Many of the participants also advocate for nationalized, single-payer healthcare, a reform Obama has rejected but that remains close to the hearts of many liberals.

Here's a list (though it may not be 100 percent complete):

• AFL-CIO


• National Education Association


• MoveOn.org


• Public Citizen


• Campaign for America's Future


• Health Care for America Now


• Progressive Democrats of America


• California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee


• Physicians for a National Health Program


• The Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care


• The Vineeta Foundation


• DC for Obama


• DC Fights Back

They even have a Facebook page for the event. The Progressive Democrats of America also organized a congressional call-in campaign for Tuesday.

- Jeffrey Young

"This time we will not fail."

- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), just now at the White House healthcare summit, referring to healthcare reform.

I imagine much will be made today of this New York Times story on left-wing lobbying groups gearing up for a battle for several of President Obama's initiatives, including healthcare. We wrote about that story's protagonist, Ralph Neas, earlier this month when he was named CEO of the National Coalition on Healthcare and, according to the TImes article, he has already stepped up the group's efforts.

Recent days have found Mr. Neas in a new perch, preparing to join the coming fight over President Obama Read more...

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has scheduled a mark up Wednesday on a slew of healthcare bills but one of them really stands out: a measure to give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate tobacco products.

Waxman has made a career crusading against tobacco use (and tobacco companies) so it's not much of a surprise that he'd want to advance this bill early in the year. Waxman penned an op-ed piece for The Hill back in 2007 promoting his bill; read it here.

This is a major priority for Waxman and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and is sure to reignite the lobbying fight between Philip Morris's parent company, Altria, which supports FDA regulation, and the rest of the tobacco industry.

Democrats have been trying to put tobacco under FDA control since the Clinton administration but have some up short so far. The House passed the bill last August but though the Senate version made it through committee, it never got a floor vote. Back in 2004, the Senate passed the tobacco regulation bill by unanimous consent so it's a fair bet President Obama could be signing this bill pretty soon.

Here's the full slate for Wednesday's mark-up, courtesy a committee press release: Read more...

If President Obama is going ahead with a major push on health reform this year, the National Governors Association (NGA) wants to make sure it's got a seat at the table.

At the tail end of their visit to Washington for the NGA's winter meeting, the governors announced Monday the formation of a health reform task force, one of the chief aims of which will be to make sure that the Obama administration and the Congress don't take health reform in a direction that detracts from ongoing state-based efforts, such as the Massachusetts universal coverage program.

"The Task Force is designed to identify and define gubernatorial priorities and to inform and advise the work of Congress and the administration," says an NGA press release.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is on the task force, along with Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), who has been reported as Obama's first choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D), who says he's no longer longer a candidate for HHS, is also a member of the group.

The remaining task force members are:

* Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), the NGA's vice chairman and the co- chairman of the task force
* Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D), the co-chairwoman of the task force
* Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D), the NGA chairman
* Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R)
* Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R)
* Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R)
* North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven (R)
* Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. (R)
* Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire (D)

- Jeffrey Young