Aiken Named Co-Chair of the Health Care Workforce Subcommittee
Dateline: January 1993, President Clinton launches a reform effort to provide universal coverage using “managed competition” and appointed the First Lady to assemble the health care reform task force. Aiken was among the few nurses appointed by Hillary Rodham Clinton to serve among the top ranks of the task force.
October 18, 2018Dr. Aiken’s reputation as a member of the Physician Payment Review Commission made her an ideal “cluster consultant” to help prepare legislation for overhauling the nation’s health-care system. The Washington Post listed Aiken as a task force leader along with Ira Magaziner, the White House chief health-care policy advisor; Judith Feder, former deputy assistant secretary for health policies at the Department of Health and Human Services; and, Tipper Gore, wife of the Vice President.
One of the issues being worked on was Medicare funding for GNE. The work of the task force led to her influential paper in JAMA calling for Medicare Nursing Education Reform. That idea progressed to the ACA GNE Demonstration that CHOPR had led and we are now seeking permanent Medicare funding based upon positive results of the evaluation.
“Some big ideas take a long time to come to fruition,” said Dr. Aiken in 2018, “this big idea has been championed for over two decades by CHOPR and is finally getting political traction that might change Medicare in the near term.”
- Hillary Clinton To Head Panel On Health Care, New York Times, 1/26/93
- White House List of Task Force Includes Few Nurses, Legislative Network for Nurses, 4/7/93
- On the Brink of Healthcare Reform, Nursing Poised for Impact, Nursing Dimensions, Fall 1993
- Aiken, L.H., Gwyther, M.E., Medicare Funding of Nurse Education: The Case for Policy Change, Journal of the American Medical Association, 1995
- History of Health Care Reform, poster
- Health Task Force photos from Clinton Library archives.