House Republican Majority Leader Backs Pro-ObamaCare Nominee for Medicare/Medicaid Post

Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA), House Majority Leader, "met" Marilyn Tavenner, Obama's new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) nominee 20 years ago and thinks she's "eminently qualified" to lead the $800 billion agency in charge of 100 million poor, elderly and disabled Americans.

This is the same Eric Cantor who told CBS's Erica Hill last June ObamaCare "was full of budget gimmickry" and "It's important, I think, to remember that most Americans don't like the health care bill."　

Last March Tavenner made it clear if nominated for the top post she will "follow the 5-year plan outlined in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." This despite the fact the majority of Americans, as Cantor said, continue to voice their opposition to ObamaCare. In a speech to the Nashville Health Care Council, Tavenner assured the audience "the agencies' priorities would not change" under her leadership. For more on her background, see this.

In his 2009 book Young Guns, Cantor wrote that he and his co-authors, Reps Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, had fundamental disagreements with the Obama administration on how to fix the healthcare system.

We believe the patient and her doctor should be the decision makers when it comes to health care, not a bureaucrat in the basement of the Health and Human Services building in Washington DC. Far from "bending the cost curve down," their plan had a trillion-dollar price tag.

We are committed, not simply to repealing Democratic health-care reform, but replacing it with a system that works for all Americans by focusing first and foremost on lowering costs.

As Donald Berwick's second in command at CMS this past year, Marilyn Tavenner repeatedly stated she will not alter her boss's plan; a plan that includes an Independent Payment Advisory Board -- a panel of fifteen unelected bureaucrats that Cantor himself said would "restrict providers discussions about what treatments are best for the patient."　

Is　Cantor so　enamored of Tavenner's private-public experience he is forgetting for whom she works? The congressman conceded he's not in the Senate so he won't get a vote and "obviously, she'll be working for a president with an agenda that's quite different than mine."

Could Cantor's willingness to　overlook Tavenner's allegiance to Obama's "agenda" have anything to do with past financial contributions she made?

Tavenner made more than $23,500 in political contributions from 1998-2011, according to public records. Not all the money went to Democrats. She also donated to Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, now the House Majority Leader, who represented her longtime home city of Richmond. CMS is a politically-scrutinized agency, and Tavenner seems to have done her own share of scrutinizing politicians. From 1998 through 2011, the nurse-turned-executive-turned-public servant contributed more than $23,500 to Democrats, Republicans and hospital association PACs, according to the Federal Election Commission's online database. That's more than the last five CMS administrators combined (Dobias, 11/29).

Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report