10:00 AM Thursday, January 8, 2009: Confirmation Hearing for Secretary of Health and Human Services-Designate, Former Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.)
CNN HAS THE HEARING LIVE NOW!
Today's hearing will be carried live on C-SPAN and perhaps on the cable networks since this is the first confirmation hearing, which will be the appointment of Daschle to be the Health and Human Services Secretary. It will be a hearing in which Senate Members will ask questions of Daschle in order to find out more details about Obama's plan for health care reform.
This is where we should start paying attention for clues in the direction that the health care reform plan will go in. Will it have mandates? Will it include the public option as a competitive player among private insurance plans, or an anemic public option for the elderly, disabled, and low-income only?
These are the kind of questions that we need answered. I don't want a health care reform plan that's styled after Massachussett's as we know that RomneyCare has been disastrous for the residents of Massachusetts. If Obama doesn't go big on health care and with the right sort of details, it will make it harder for him to be re-elected in 2012.
I will NOT accept a health care reform plan that does not include the public option as a competitive player in order to lower the premium rates of the other insurance plans. How about you? Do you want universal health care to be just universal health INSURANCE coverage?
For more details on the health care crisis in America today, please feel free to visit nyceve's diary and ask yourself these questions.
And as we already see in an article linked by C-SPAN to the Heritage Foundation, the kind of right-wing questions that will be asked by the Republican Members of the Senate.
And to see why the public option is so important, please go to Health Care For America NOW (HCAN), and check out the paper written by Jacob Hacker that helps make the case for the public option as a competitive player.
It's time to hear what the answers may be from Senator Daschle, hence the live-blog of this confirmation hearing. If you think this is important, please feel free to recommend the Mothership diary. Thank you.