This New England

President Obama should have chosen the first time around the man who would be far and away the best choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services -- physician and former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber -- instead of Beltway fixer and climber Tom Daschle.

Dr. Kitzhaber is a brilliant doctor who knows the health-care system inside and out. And he is a superb and honest administrator who helped create and implement the Oregon health-care system, perhaps the best in the nation. He is both practical and visionary.

Unlike the likes of Tom Daschle, Dr. Kitzhaber has shown little interest in being a Washington fat cat, or indeed in moving far away from his favorite fishing places in the west. But maybe Mr. Obama can appeal to his patriotism in taking a job to fix the Western World's worst health-care system -- a system whose decline into chaos, red tape and greed is literally killing many thousands of Americans a year and making many companies uncompetitive in the world marketplace.

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 Tags  HHS John Kitzhaber Tom Daschle

Comments

Lena Gerwick said:

Yes, lets convince John Kitzhaber that he is the man for the job as HHS secretary.
Hopefully Obama will listen.

Link | February 4, 2009 4:49 PM
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Enid said:

There is an email campaign underway to ask Obama to consider Kitzhaber -
www.OnwardOregon.org/czar

1600 emails sent to DC so far

Link | February 5, 2009 11:33 AM
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