Only Tom Daschle can save the Affordable Care Act

Only Tom Daschle can save the Affordable Care Act
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Notes from Indian Country
By Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji)
October 31, 2013

Only Tom Daschle can save the Affordable Care Act

Everyday news about the Affordable Care Act gets worse.

President Barack Obama, in the early days of his Administration, before he was kicked from pillar to post by the media and the Republicans, had the foresight to nominate former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle to head up his attempts to bring affordable health care to all Americans.

Daschle had written the pivotal book on what was wrong with the health care system in America. His book; "Critical: What we can do about the health care crisis" could have been a precursor of the events that followed before and after the passing of the Affordable Care Act.

Daschle, unfortunately, had an error in his tax filings, an error he corrected as soon as it was discovered, but rather than take the man as a whole and understand that his impact and understanding of health care in America would be vital to getting the Act off of the ground, Obama and his obsequious advisors, dumped Daschle like a rotten potato. What a terrible mistake!

The Republican Congress has tried 46 times to halt the Affordable Care Act to no avail. And just when the Act is put into action the failure of the Administration to find an equitable and secure method of allowing customers to sign on to the program came crashing down with every computer network glitch imaginable.

Kathleen Sebelius, the current Secretary of Health, has been a dismal failure. Her apologies to the members of Congress for her repeated failures are ludicrous. An already beleaguered Act was put on the front pages of every newspaper in the Nation giving the Republicans all of the ammunition they needed to thoroughly eviscerate the Act.

The Affordable Care Act was already treading on shaky ground and to expose it to more criticism was totally unnecessary. The one person in America that should have been at the helm of the Act from the beginning was Tom Daschle. He drew up the plans, he knew the Act inside and out and to change horses in the middle of the stream on an Act that needed life support from the outset put it in jeopardy that could have easily been avoided with the right person in charge.

Tom Daschle was thrown under the bus because of the overly cautious advisors to the president. If they thought they had avoided some form of scandal by tossing him aside they were completely wrong. By immediately taking care of the mistake made by his accountant on his taxes, Daschle righted the ship.

By turning their backs on the one man who could have seen the Affordable Act succeed from beginning to end the Obama Administration put their own heads on the chopping block. This was a self-inflicted wound that forever placed in jeopardy an Act that could have brought affordable health care to 44 million Americans without health insurance.

We advise Obama and his staff to swallow what pride they have left and on bended knee, go back and beg Tom Daschle to pick up the pieces of the Act they shattered and scattered. Daschle may be able to salvage an Act that ignorance nearly destroyed.

(Tim Giago, Publisher of Native Sun News, can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com)

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