Next health challenge: costs

Next health challenge: costs

Dallas Morning: President Barack Obama apparently has solved one of his health care problems. Last Monday, he named Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to head the Health and Human Services Department and former Clinton administration aide Nancy-Ann Min DeParle to lead his health reform effort from the White House.

They would fill the gaping hole left in the administration lineup after tax problems forced former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to bow out as Obama’s pick to handle both jobs.

Sebelius is the headline pick. A Beltway outsider, she could bring a different view to the debate, and she is a governor who has worked across party lines, which she highlighted by having Bob Dole at her side at the White House. Before that, she was Kansas’ insurance commissioner, which gives her a ready-to-go understanding of health markets.

But fielding a team is the least of Obama’s challenges. His larger problem is explaining how he intends to invest $650 billion to cover more uninsured Americans and save money in our health system.

Obama says he wants more community clinics as a way to take pressure off hospital emergency rooms. That makes sense, and we like that he’s trying to determine which procedures work best. Washington then can more selectively reimburse through Medicare and other programs.

Our concern is that he needs much more than those reforms to reduce health costs, especially those that will make Medicare unfathomably expensive once baby boomers retire. It’s not a good sign that he has proposed taking savings from Medicare and spending them on his plan to expand coverage.

Taxpayers can’t afford $650 billion for greater coverage without knowing how it will lower costs.

Obama has his team, and evidently a smart one. What Americans need now is a roadmap, and a clear one.