NY Times----
WASHINGTON — She has become one of the Obama administration’s most visible surrogates on health care, announcing the release of $851 million in federal financing for health clinics, calling for tougher nutritional standards in the government’s school lunch program and urging Democrats to rally around the president’s efforts to revamp health care.
The high-profile emissary? Not Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, or Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health policy adviser. It is the first lady, Michelle Obama.
“We’re at a critical juncture in the debate about health care in this country,” Mrs. Obama said at a clinic here in June. “The current system is economically unsustainable, and I don’t have to tell any of you that. And despite having the most expensive health care system in the world, we’re not necessarily healthier for it.”
After several months of focusing on her family, her garden and inspiring young people, Mrs. Obama is stepping into more wonkish terrain. She is toughening her message and talking more openly about influencing public policy as she works to integrate her efforts more closely with those of policy makers in the West Wing.
In June, Mrs. Obama traveled to San Francisco with Melody C. Barnes, the president’s domestic policy adviser, for the start of the administration’s initiative to promote volunteerism.
A week later, she went to a Washington clinic with the director of the Health Resources and Services Administration to announce the release of stimulus money for clinics. This month, her policy director joined a new interagency working group, including health, agriculture and housing officials, that will develop policy, legislation and public outreach to combat obesity.
While her efforts are most visible in the health care arena, Mrs. Obama is also focusing on other issues.
In May, she convened a meeting — with James L. Jones, the president’s national security adviser; Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget chief, among others — to consider new policies and programs to help military families. Her staff is also working with nonprofit, corporate and philanthropic groups to help rally resources to support such families.
Mrs. Obama’s aides say the substantive speeches and increased coordination with the West Wing reflect the first lady’s determination to have an impact on the issues she cares about.
“The listening portion of this is over,” said Camille Johnston, her communications director. “Let’s make sure that we’re having an impact and delivering things as well.”
But Mrs. Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former hospital executive, is still treading cautiously as she fleshes out her priorities: promoting healthy living and community service and supporting military and working families.
Susan Sher, the first lady’s new chief of staff, emphasized that Mrs. Obama would not testify before Congress or argue the merits of competing health care plans. Indeed, the first lady did not stand alongside her husband in the White House last week when he praised the Senate health committee for approving an overhaul of the health care system.
Mrs. Obama has chosen instead to deliver her recent remarks in more traditional settings for a first lady — at a clinic, a playground and in the White House garden. Her aides say she will promote policy, not make it, and will continue to concentrate on children and families. They say they do not expect her to be accused of overstepping her bounds as Hillary Rodham Clinton was when she tried to remake health care as the first lady.
Jocelyn Frye, Mrs. Obama’s policy director, said the first lady wanted to “draw the connection between this massive conversation that’s happening about health reform and what’s really happening to people on the ground.”
Mrs. Obama’s advisers say this is a natural progression. After settling her family into the White House, the first lady could more easily turn to the garden and then a discussion of obesity, the importance of preventive care and corresponding government policies and legislation, they say.
The shift also coincides with Mrs. Obama’s decision in June to choose Ms. Sher, her longtime friend, to replace Jackie Norris as her chief of staff. At the time of that announcement, Ms. Sher, who was Mrs. Obama’s boss at the University of Chicago Medical Center, was working on health care issues as an associate counsel to the president.
Since then, as her husband has worked on health care, Mrs. Obama has peppered her speeches with statistics and references to health-related legislation, like the coming reauthorization of child nutrition programs.
She has repeatedly cited the costs of preventable illnesses like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure to the nation’s health care system ($120 billion a year, she says) and the impact of poor diet on children. (“Nearly a third of the children in this country are either overweight or obese, and a third will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lifetime,” she said. “Those numbers are unacceptable.”)
She sent out a mass e-mail message to Democrats across the country, urging them to volunteer to improve health care services and “to make a difference as we work to reform America’s health care system.”
And while she has often focused on motherhood, gardening and other domestic subjects in interviews, she took on a thorny policy issue last month: the prospects for a health care overhaul in an Obama administration.
“There are going to be tough choices that have to be made,” Mrs. Obama said on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” emphasizing that “no system is going to be perfect.”
Still, Mrs. Obama said she believed that the president would succeed where the Clintons did not. The country “has moved to another point in time,” she said. “More and more people are ready for this kind of reform.”
Sources: NY Times, Huffington Post
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