Last week, the Obama team started a ‘community discussion‘ on its Web site about health care. Well, former Sen. Tom Daschle, who will head Health & Human Services, was so happy with the results – more than 3,500 responses – that he and Laura Arnonson, a member of the health policy team, filmed a short video that they posted yesterday to quickly review a couple of key issues and the overall response to their effort.
To be candid, there wasn’t much said that we don’t already know. Daschle, at various turns, says things such as, “We need to really put the emphasis on prevention” and later, “We need to contain costs.” To be fair, the willingness to engage the public in this way is worth noting. After all, when was the last time that HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt deliberately spoke to Americans by way of YouTube? Send us a clip if you have one. Meanwhile, Daschle promises more online discussions are forthcoming.
The Obama team also uses a “word cloud” to illustrate “the 100 most commonly used words in the healthcare discussion.”
