This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, December 16, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Obama Economic Team may complicate some of Obama's plans for health care reform,

that is, if he listens to his economic team.

Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute comments.

Barack Obama has said that he wants to reform health care in the United States.

He wants to make health insurance accessible and

affordable to every American and he has laid out a plan that will help him do that.

It includes things like an employer mandate. It includes federal funding for things like

health information technologies and electronic medical records.

It's going to involve a lot of expansions of government programs and some other things

But what's really interesting to me is as the Obama transition team does its work and as

President-elect Obama selects his economic advisors, he's made some interesting choices because

he's picked some economic advisors that are going to make it more difficult

for him to argue for certain elements of his plan.

For example, if you look at his selection for Director of the Office of Management and Budget,

that's an economist named Peter Orsag.

Now Peter Orsag's last job was Director of the Congressional Budget Office.

And while he was there, he issued multiple reports

that threw cold water on some of candidate

Barack Obama's ideas for health care reform.

Barack Obama wants the federal government

to either mandate or fund electronic medical records and other health information technologies that will help make care more convenient.

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