WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Monday that he would nominate Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to head the Department of Health and Human Services, tapping a Washington outsider for the senior health post in his Cabinet as he pushes an ambitious effort to overhaul the nation’s health care system.
The president also announced he would turn to a more seasoned Washington hand to run the White House Office of Health Reform, a position created to spearhead the administration’s health campaign.
For that job, Obama tapped Nancy-Ann DeParle, who ran the Medicare and Medicaid programs in the Clinton administration in the late 1990s.
In Sebelius, the president would have an ally with a long record of wrestling with the challenges of changing a health care system. The two-term governor, an early Obama supporter, for years has labored against Republican opposition to try to expand health coverage to Kansans who lack insurance.
Obama’s choice of Sebelius also underscored how much he probably will have to rely on others to shepherd his health agenda through Congress.
She has none of the Washington experience the president had looked for in his first choice for the job, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Daschle, who withdrew his candidacy last month amid a scandal over unpaid taxes, also planned to serve in the post now to be filled by DeParle.
Obama said he expected Sebelius and DeParle to play central roles in what would be the most aggressive push to reshape health care since the Clinton administration’s failed effort in the early 1990s.
Obama singled out Sebelius’ experience working with Republicans in Kansas. “She has bridged the partisan divide,” Obama said of a governor who “knows health care inside and out.”
He called DeParle one of the leading experts on health care and regulatory issues.
If confirmed, Sebelius would take over a department charged with overseeing the severely strained Medicare and Medicaid programs and a host of other agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration.
Also under the Department of Health and Human Services are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Indian Health Service.
But Sebelius’ biggest challenges would depend on the success of a health-reform campaign that could greatly expand the federal government’s role in the health care market.
