Former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle to Outline Challenges Ahead With Affordable Care Act

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is discussing the challenges that lie ahead for the Affordable Care Act and what’s needed to ensure its success as part of the UCSF Chancellor’s Health Policy Lecture Series this week.

Tom Daschle

The lecture, titled “The Affordable Care Act: A New Paradigm for Health Care in America,” takes place on Wednesday, Oct. 3, in Cole Hall on the Parnassus campus. The annual event highlights the important role of health policy in the research and clinical work conducted at UCSF and what members of the campus community can do to impact policy.

Since leaving the Senate in 2005, the Democrat from South Dakota has distinguished himself as an expert in health care policy. Daschle wrote the 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, examining the need for reform and advocating for universal health care. His 2010 book, Getting It Done: How Obama and Congress Finally Broke the Stalemate to Make Way for Health Care Reform, recounted the behind-the-scenes political process to pass the Affordable Care Act.

Daschle also is a member of the Health Policy and Management Executive Council at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Aspen Global Policy Advisory Council for the Health Worker Migration Initiative, the GE Healthymagination Advisory Board and the Children’s Heartlink International Advisory Board.

The former Air Force intelligence officer was elected in 1978 to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served four terms before getting elected to the Senate in 1986. He rose to the top Democratic leadership position in the Senate in 1994 and served in that role for more than a decade.

In 2007, Daschle joined with former Majority Leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole, and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center, an organization dedicated to finding common ground on pressing public policy issues.

Daschle currently works as a senior policy advisor with DLA Piper, a Washington, DC law firm where he advises clients on health care, climate change, energy, trade, financial services and telecommunications. He serves on the board of the Center for American Progress, is vice chair of the National Democratic Institute and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. 

Daschle joins a distinguished group of leaders and experts that have participated in the Chancellor’s Health Policy Lecture Series since it launched in 2006. Former speakers include Julie Gerberding, MD, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and JudyAnn Bigby, MD, secretary of the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services who played a key role in implementing the state’s universal health insurance law.