Rep. Issa questions Obama health czar’s industry ties

Well, The Hill had a hard time locating anyone who thinks President Obama’s health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle’s past professional ties to healthcare companies pose a conflict of interest but CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight” found someone: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

DeParle worked in senior health policy positions in the Clinton administration, then left the government for the private sector starting in 2001. Until being appointed as director of the White House Office of Health Reform Monday, DeParle had been a managing director of the private-equity firm CCMP Capital Advisors and served on the boards of directors of several companies, including the medical device maker Boston Scientific, the pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions and the health information-technology company Cerner Corp.

Issa, the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, doesn’t do much more than insinuate but his argument seems to be that because DeParle served on Cerner’s board, and because Obama recently signed an economic stimulus bill that provides $17.6 billion for health IT, and because DeParle will be in a position to influence what companies get that money, it follows that Cerner could unduly benefit. (Disclosure: The Hill only learned of the CNN report because Issa’s office trumpeted it in a press release and posted the CNN clip on YouTube.)

Here’s CNN’s transcript of what Issa said with the full video below it:

There’s no question that there will be a large presidential earmark for integrating a data system to try to reduce costs to try to put people’s health records all into a single data base. A lot of these efficiencies, although merited are going to lead to picking very large multibillion dollar winners, and she’s going to be at the center of it all.

CNN isn’t the only media outlet to raise these questions about DeParle’s potential conflicts of interest. The New York Times and Politico also ran suggestive stories this week and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs got some questions about it during his briefing Monday.

But when The Hill asked some government ethics experts about DeParle, they really just didn’t see a problem.

Here’s an excerpt from our story on Thursday:

[P]eople want to maybe say that anyone who