World

Obama Picks Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services Head

by Rob Walker | December 11, 2008 at 09:43 am

67 views | 0 Recommendations | 1 comment

Weeks after hinting about it, President-elect Barack Obama announced today that Tom Daschle will head the Health and Human Services Department.

Tom Daschle will be a “leading architect” of efforts to revamp the U.S. health-care system, President-elect Barack Obama said today in announcing the former Senate Democratic leader is his pick to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Daschle also will oversee a new White House entity, the Office of Health Reform, that will coordinate health-care efforts. Obama named Jeanne M. Lambrew, a professor at the University of Texas who collaborated with Daschle on a book on health care, as his deputy in the White House office.

You can read Obama's entire speech here:

Today I'm pleased to announce two leading members of my health care team whose work will be critical to those efforts. Senator Tom Daschle and Dr. Jeanne Lambrew.

This news came during the same announcement that Steven Chu, an experimental physicist, would be heading up the Secretary of Energy position. NP member Amitjha has that story here:

Steven Chu is an American experimental physicist and, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Energy. He is known for his research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. His current research is concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level.

Obama has chosen former South Dakota Senator and one-time Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle for the key Cabinet position of Health and Human Services secretary. Daschle and Obama share a passion for health care reform and are strong supporters of a universal health care system.