Meet The New Health Care Reform CZAR – Nancy-Ann Min DeParle

Ms. Deparle is going to have a lot to say on how health care financing reform is designed.

Obama sets up formal office for healthcare reform

Thu Apr 9, 2009 10:21am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama set up an executive office for healthcare reform at the White House on Wednesday, saying the overhaul was one of the biggest priorities for the first year of his presidency.

Obama issued an executive order that says the U.S. healthcare system “suffers from serious and pervasive problems.”

The White House Office of Health Reform (Health Reform Office) will help the executive branch steer “the federal government’s comprehensive effort to improve access to health care, the quality of such care, and the sustainability of the health care system,” the order reads.

It also says the Secretary of Health and Human Services will create an Office of Health Reform to work with the White House office.

Obama has nominated former Clinton administration health official Nancy-Ann DeParle to lead the White House office. His nominee for Health and Human Services secretary is Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius.

The new office will help ensure that policymakers across the executive branch work toward Obama’s healthcare agenda, the order reads.

U.S. government economists predict that public and private health spending will hit $2.5 trillion this year, taking up a 17.6 percent share of gross domestic product.

Yet studies suggest Americans get poorer care than people in other industrialized countries that have national healthcare plans, and 46 million Americans have no health insurance at all.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Xavier Briand)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy-Ann_Min_DeParle

Nancy-Ann Min DeParle (born December 17, 1956) is an American expert on health care issues.

DeParle was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Rockwood, Tennessee. She served as the director of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) from 1997 to 2000, and the Office of Management and Budget before then. Since her departure from HCFA, she has worked as a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, taught at the Wharton School of Business, and acted as an investment advisor at JP Morgan Partners, LLC and on the board of directors at Boston Scientific Corporation and Cerner. She is also a Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). On 1 March 2009, she was named by U.S. President Barack Obama serve as “Health Reform Czar”, heading up the new White House Office of Health Reform.

DeParle is a trustee at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and a director of the National Quality Forum, Accredo Health Inc., Triad Hospitals, Guidant Corporation and DaVita Corporation.

She was a partner at the law firm of Bass, Berry & Sims in Nashville before serving as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services in the cabinet of Governor Ned McWherter from 1987 to 1989.

She earned her bachelor’s degree at University of Tennessee, a JD from Harvard Law School, and bachelors and masters degrees at Balliol College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She was the first woman to serve as president of the student body at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

She is married to Jason DeParle, a reporter for The New York Times.