Daschle Visits Indiana for Grass-Roots Forumhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/29/AR2008122902230.html?wprss=rss_healthDolly Sweet, 77, has battled cancer more than once. She's a fighter. But when her doctor recently prescribed a medication that cost $35,000 a year, she felt she had no choice.
"I canceled the medicine," she said matter-of-factly to former senator Thomas A. Daschle, President-elect Barack Obama's top health adviser, who had come to the fire station here on a quest for "fresh ideas" on improving U.S. medical care.
"I wonder if you could talk to the drug companies," Sweet asked Daschle. "That's more than my Social Security."
Daschle, seated on a metal folding chair with pen in hand and videographer in tow, symbolically kicked off the incoming administration's effort to revamp health care with a grass-roots event that not-so-coincidentally mimicked the types of gatherings that Obama drew on to build support for his presidential candidacy.
"It's stories like that that can make a huge difference as we try to persuade members of Congress and others about the importance of trying to make the system better," Daschle told Sweet.
(snip)
Daschle told the 35 people at the open meeting in Dublin -- one of 8,500 that will be held nationwide -- that it was "designed really to engage the public, to get out of Washington and hear directly from you about your concerns, about your recommendations, about ways you think our system can be made to work better." Aides said Daschle plans to attend another health-care forum today, at the Congress Heights Senior Wellness Center in Southeast Washington.