Last night, Barack Obama said:

Now, I don’t believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet, but I’ve talked to enough doctors to know that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs. So — so — so I’m proposing that we move forward on a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first and let doctors focus on practicing medicine. I know that the Bush administration considered authorizing demonstration projects in individual states to test these ideas. I think it’s a good idea, and I’m directing my secretary of health and human services to move forward on this initiative today.

Kathleen Sebelius, the former Governor of Kansas, is the current Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Note this from her biography:

Sebelius served as executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association (now Kansas Association for Justice) from 1977-1986.

So, do we really think she’s going to do anything other than skew the results?

From my email box. It’s being billed as an SEIU event.

TODAY, August 7th, at 2:30pm EDT, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is hosting a call with health care activists and SEIU members to discuss what needs to happen in order to win health care reform, and to directly respond to accusations and distortions from opponents. At the end of the call, Gov. Sebelius will also answer your questions on health care reform. Here’s the log-in details:

To join by phone, follow these instructions:

1. Dial 1-888-567-1599 and
2. When prompted, enter access code 9363997

Or, to join via the web, visit the following address: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=61226

From the diaries, by Erick.

As noted below, Rep Lloyd Doggett of TX got his head handed to him talking to his constituents back home in the most liberal part of Texas.  He’s not alone.

Panzeramic has a whole series of videos from an Arlen Specter event with [HHS Secretary] Kathleen Sebelius in Philly.  Here’s my favorite…

Check out the site, they’ve got a bunch more. It would appear that the indians are restless.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the former trial lawyer lobbyist who looked out for the interest group while in the state’s highest office — even though doing so meant preventing decreased costs and increased access to care within her own state’s health care system — has a tax problem.

According to this letter from Sebelius to Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, respectively, the Kansas Democrat and her husband hired a CPA to “conduct a thorough review” of their tax returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 “in preparation for [her] confirmation process as the nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.”

While conducting his review, the CPA found that the Sebeliuses owed $7,040 in federal taxes, which was paid along with $848 in interest.

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Update 3/31/09 by Jeff: Ho, hum, it appears Gov. Sebelius is yet another Obama nominee with a tax problem.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (Democrat), fresh off a losing battle against the GOP-led state legislature to solve the state budget crisis by incurring more debt while keeping expenditures exorbitant, has been selected by President Obama to head up the department of Health and Human Services. Given the amount of time between the February 3 withdrawal of Obama’s first choice for the post, former Senator and health care rationing advocate Tom Daschle (D-SD), it certainly appears that Sebelius was a very, very distant second choice (if that) to fill the empty cabinet position.

The reason she was a distant second for the post, though, probably (based on President Obama’s track record of nominees to date) had little or nothing to do with a reluctance to nominate yet another lobbyist to his cabinet.

Before being elected state Insurance Commissioner, Sebelius was executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association (an organization which has since dropped the accurate title for the more obfuscative “Kansas Association for Justice”). She continued protecting the state Trial Lawyers Association’s interests as Governor, using her veto power in 2007 to kill SB 55, a tort reform measure aimed directly at lowering health care costs by providing partial protection to health care professionals in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling “that physicians and other health care providers could be sued under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act for disputes over the care and treatment of patients.”

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Late yesterday, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (Democrat) succumbed to pressure and gave up on her attempt to hold state employee paychecks and taxpayer overpayment refunds hostage for $225,000,000.00 in ransom.

Sebelius’s overspending on unnecessary programs, and unwillingness to heed warnings last year from the Republican-led state legislature that a failure to trim budgetary fat would lead to a 2009 crisis, put Kansas’ state government in such a budget crunch that its only options were to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its bloated budget or to add to the $550,000,000.00 it had already borrowed from itself in late 2008 — a total that must, by law, be repaid by the June 30 end of the 2009 fiscal year.

The Republican legislature addressed the crisis by passing a measure to cut the budget by $326,000,000.00 — around 4.25% per department, according to the Kansas City Star.

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Faced with a shortage of funds this year and unwilling to cut the bloated state budget, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is planning to welsh on the state’s debt to taxpayers who overpaid in 2008 and to put a hold on paychecks owed to state employees until the Republican-controlled state legislature allows her to break state law by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from already  bankrupt state funds.

Breaking Borrowing Law

The Kansas Finance Council, which is made up of Sebelius and six state GOP leaders, is refusing to approve the Democratic Governor’s $225,000,000.00 borrowing plan because state law requires all such debts, called certificates of indebtedness, to be retired by the end of the fiscal year in which they were issued. Kansas’ fiscal year ends June 30, and the state has already taken out $550,000,000.00 in certificates that it likely won’t be able to repay. Approving the additional amount requested by Sebelius would push that debt total over three-quarters of a billion dollars with 4 1/2 months remaining to somehow find the money to  pay it off within the timeframe required by law.

“We cannot issue more certificates if the funds will not materialize by the end of the year,” said House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) in a press release. “Without the revised 2009 budget bill, there is no way that we can legally issue a certificate knowing full well that the money will not be available to retire the debt.”

Governor Turns Up Nose at Real Alternatives

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