Obama Pick Gets a 2nd Chance on Health Care - NYTimes.com

Obama Pick Gets a 2nd Chance on Health Care - NYTimes.com
In 2004, her second year in office, Ms. Sebelius proposed expanding the state’s low Medicaid thresholds to cover 70,000 of the state’s 300,000 or so uninsured, and to pay for it by raising tobacco taxes. The measure died.
The next year, she issued an executive order creating a new health policy agency that would centralize purchasing and planning in her office. The Legislature blocked the move, and instead created an agency controlled by legislative appointees. Ms. Sebelius went along.
In her 2007 State of the State address, Ms. Sebelius urged lawmakers to “commit ourselves to universal coverage.” Though she said little about how to achieve that, Republicans tarred her as an advocate of “socialized medicine” — or “Hillarycare,” as Melvin Neufeld, who was House speaker at the time, put it.

Although she signed the bill, which also made a modest expansion of Medicaid for pregnant women, she called it the session’s biggest disappointment. She had also failed to win approval of a statewide indoor smoking ban.