The Governor of Tennessee, Phil Bredesen, wants to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. That should never happen.
On Sunday, I posted a quote from our good friend Jacki Schechner about Gov. Phil Bredesen:
"A lot of elected officials are in bed with the insurance industry, but Phil Bredesen doesn't stop there. He let them pay to redecorate his mansion. We can't think of anyone more wrong for health care reform or more wrong for America," said Jacki Schechner, spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now. "This is a guy whose single greatest health care achievement is stripping 200,000 people of health care coverage in Tennessee - a move that was not only bad policy but an unconscionable act."Bredesen pretty much confirmed his love for the industry and disdain for health care consumers (all of us) in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:
"Anybody who's got some real scars and experience is going to have their detractors," the governor said Monday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "People at the White House are smart enough to be able to assess that." And he took a swipe at his opponents, saying that "advocacy groups don't matter nearly as much as the pharmaceutical groups, the hospitals, the doctors' groups. There's a lot of very powerful interest groups that will play in this thing."With that love of the health care industry (the very people who have created the health care debacle), Bredesen would have been the perfect pick for Secretary of HHS for George Bush, not Barack Obama. Bredesen made his fortune in the health insurance industry. He's an industry guy. I don't know anyone who has had a positive experience with anyone from a health insurance company.
People at the White House should be smart enough to not appoint Bredesen to HHS, but he's being vetted anyway. According to the WSJ, it sounds like Rahm Emanuel is being lobbied by health care lobbyists to appoint Bredesen. That alone should end the discussion.
If Obama is serious about health care reform -- and he says he is -- Obama has to say NO to Bredesen. And, importantly, Obama should make that clear to Rahm Emanuel.
