Earlier today, John wrote a post titled "Howard Dean for HHS." That's a good idea.
A bad idea for HHS Secretary would be Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. Ezra Klein, who knows more about health care than most, writes:
He's not the only candidate. But an array of sources say he's a serious candidate. And he'd be a very risky choice.An even worse idea would be Bredesen's fellow Tennessean, Blue Dog Congressman Jim Cooper. He destroyed health care reform in 1994 and no doubt would do it again. Digby dug into Cooper's record. It's ugly:
Phil Bredesen is the governor of Tennessee. Before he was the governor of Tennessee, he made his money in the managed care revolution, founding HealthAmerica, which acquired and ran HMOs. In the late-80s, he sold HealthAmerica to MaxiCare Health Plans, pocketing $47 million in the deal. A few years later, he teamed up with HealthAmerica's former CFO to form Coventry Corporation, a similarly oriented company, which later merged with Principal Health Care to become Coventry Health Care, which was, until 2007, a Fortune 500 managed care provider (Bredesen was no longer involved).
All of which is to say, if you're concerned about Daschle's apparent ties to the health care industry, recruiting someone from the health care industry is an odd direction to take. As governor of Tennessee, Bredesen is famous -- or infamous -- for gutting TennCare, the state's low income health care provider.
[Cooper is] being discussed as the replacement for Daschle at HHS, which is only slightly less ludicrous than the silly idea of Newt Gingrich in the job.Digby also links to this backgrounder on Cooper written last year by Open Left's Mike Lux:
Jim Cooper is an enemy of universal health care. He will, howver, work to ensure that the insurance industry and the Big Pharma gets more of your tax dollars.
I was part of the Clinton White House team on the health care reform issue in 1993/94, and no Democrat did more to destroy our chances in that fight than Jim Cooper. We had laid down a marker very early that we thought universal coverage was the most essential element to getting a good package, saying we were to happy to negotiate over the details but that universality was our bottom line.Back and still causing problems. Cooper voted against the economy recovery package last week in the House. It would be very unfortunate if Cooper was named as Secretary of HHS. In fact, it would be a disaster.
Cooper, a leader of conservative Dems on the health care issue, instead of working with us, came out early and said universality was unimportant, and came out with a bill that did almost nothing in terms of covering the uninsured. He quickly became the leading spokesman on the Dem side for the insurance industry position, and undercut us at every possible opportunity, basically ending any hopes we had for a unified Democratic Party position. I was never so delighted to see a Democrat lose as when he went down in the 1994 GOP tide.
Unfortunately, he came back, like a bad penny.
Obama has made health care reform a top priority as it should be. Losing Daschle was a setback. The Republicans in Congress are doing everything possible to undermine the economic stimulus package even as we're on the verge of a depression. Imagine what they'll do to health care. It won't be pretty. Obama needs a strong ally at HHS. Bredesen and Cooper don't make the cut.
