Well, at least Joe Knollenberg showed up in person this year. But as to what he had to say on health care, I must say, it was less than impressive. Nothing new from Joe. Just more of the same. Knollenberg again talked about employer based wellness programs and the idea of offering tax credits to employers who offer "wellness" programs.
The other favorite topic of conservatives was also touched up, blaming trial lawyers for the high cost of health care, even though studies show that only 1% of our health care dollars go to patients who are harmed by medical negligence.
One place where Joe and I agree is on creating and using electronic medical records more extensively. My only concern with electronic medical records are privacy issues and protecting those records against government spying or those records being used for nefarious activities.
While Knollenberg, Bishop and Garfield all talked about the problems, the don't seem to have many solutions, except for more personal responsibility and cutting costs, and of course more competition.
The only problem is, none of them really offered one solution for the 47 million Americans with no health care, regardless of how healthy they are, they still can't afford. Oh, and the other thing Republicans always talk about, the word privatization always rolls off their tongues.
Basically the Republican response to those 47 million Americans, "Let them eat cake," or to paraphrase Dick Cheney's response to Martha Raddatz when Cheney was told that 2/3's of Americans are against the war in Iraq, "So."
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More competition? AARP has a good story in their magazine this month highlighting how those Medicare Advantage programs drove up health care costs instead of reducing them like they claimed they would. Once they opened up the program to private insurance companies, the prices just kept climbing and climbing and climbing.
It's clear that any ideas the Republicans have benefit their corporate friends at our expense.
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