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Sebelius (D-KS), nominee to head HHS: Another Lobbyist to the Obama Administration

By: Jeff Emanuel (Diary)  |  March 11th, 2009 at 07:40 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

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.”

This move not, made in the face of warnings from the Kansas Hospital Association that “allowing [such] claims for conduct which is already covered under the traditional medical malpractice system will result in increased and duplicative litigation, increased defense costs, increased medical malpractice insurance expenses, and, ultimately, an increase in the cost of medical care,” only hints at a conflict of interest given her trial lawyer-lobbyist background, but shows that she has no interest whatsoever in actually bringing health care costs down and making quality care more affordable to the people of her state or, by extension, the country.

Ah, well. As Carter Wood at Point of Law says, “Well, it’s not as if any health care reform package coming out of the Obama Administration was going to embrace medical malpractice reform,” anyway.

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  • bobojake

    round and round and round, where it ends up nobody knows, not even obama.

  • indyooper

    I find the link of HHS nominee Kathleen Sibelius to the Kansas Trial Lawyers association to be most fascinating. We know that one of the objectives of the Obama administration is health care reform. In other words, I take that objective to be universal health care. Now, what happens in a “universal health care” state when something goes wrong, such as lack of care due to, oh, you name the reason? Who gets sued? Can you sue the doctor? Can you sue the hospital? The ultimate question becomes can you sue the King? What happens now? We have seen for many years the attempts in this country to reform the tort system that would have made it more difficult to sue health care providers. This has been thwarted time after time by trial lawyers associations and their lapdogs in government. Tort reform would lower the cost of health care in this country and make it more affordable for everyone! Here is an interesting article (link) from the National Post. It deals with the rights of Canadians to obtain care outside of the government run system.

    http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2007/09/07/john-carpay-suing-the-government-for-the-right-to-see-and-live.aspx

    Now, it has been my opinion since I moved to the United Sates over ten years ago, that the talk of the Democrat Party in regards to health care reform is all smoke and mirrors. A political issue that they have used over and over to maintian control. They need to pander to two constituencies in regards to health care. One is the people who unfortunately suffer financial distress and perhaps ruin when it comes to health care costs. I do truly feel for them and can sympathize with them, as I had to pay for most of the medical costs for the birth if one of my children. Along with them are the people that believe that ?free? health care is a constitutional right, and by advocating it as such, they can feel better about themselves at the end of the day. On the other hand however, is the powerful lobby known as the Trial Lawyer?s Association. I think Universal Health Care would provide some cost savings that tort reform surrounding medical malpractice never would have achieved. Universal health care would almost completely remove the trial lawyer?s hands from our doctor?s pockets. I am not quite ready to take the cost savings (and making trial lawyers starve, or go out and find a real job) vs. the waiting list trade off. But this still begs the question; will the trial lawyers allow their ?champion? Kathleen Sibelius to kill the hen that lays their golden eggs? I personally do not think so. The trial lawyer’s association most likely contributes more to the Democrat coffers than do those that would benefit most from a universal health care system. Now we just need to wait and see which hand holds the coin.

    • DONTREADONME

      and Government lawyers are not very good against the private lawyers, considering they are not payed very well see the Executive GS levels. Trust me, The DoD has many problems with this especially when it comes to acquisitions and developmental contracts with the competitive source selection process. See Boeing versus Northrup/Airbus for the refueling tanker contract. The only reason why you hear about this is that the contract value is quite high and it is a U.S. company (Boeing) versus Airbus. Anyway, Government run health care will stop the sueing of doctors, the U.S. Government that pays the doctor can be, much bigger pockets.

      • DONTREADONME