President Barack Obama was voted the most powerful person in healthcare by readers of Modern Healthcare, the nation's leading weekly healthcare business news magazine. It's the second consecutive year Obama topped the magazine's annual ranking of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare.
"The passage of national healthcare reform legislation in March clinched the top spot for Obama," said Modern Healthcare Editor David Burda. "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will change the delivery of healthcare services in this country forever, and it was Obama unrelenting pursuit of the legislation that made it happen."
The ranking is based on Modern Healthcare's ninth annual reader poll on the movers and shakers of the more than $2.5 trillion-a-year healthcare industry.
Like last year, many members of Obama's healthcare reform team also made this year's list. They include fellow Democrats Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Among the newcomers to the annual ranking are Mary Kay Henry, the new president of the Service Employees International Union; physician Robert Wachter, a quality expert at the University of California at San Francisco and a national leader in the hospitalist movement; and physician and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.
"This year's ranking includes a number of new 'pot stirrers,'" Burda said. "Our readers recognize the importance of people who will continue to push for improvements in healthcare even after the passage of national healthcare reform."
The complete ranking of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare for 2010 appears in the Aug. 23 issue of Modern Healthcare. The ranking also appears on the magazine's website, ModernHealthcare.com, at http://www.modernhealthcare.com/100mostpowerful.
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