No closure on Healthcare - The same for State Politics
Ray San Fratello
Posted: 09.03.2009 / 2:21 PM PDT
Last week here in Clermont, Florida Republican Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite held a couple of Town Meetings on the healthcare legislation making its way through the US Congress. No fireworks here although Minneola City Hall overflowed with over 700 people attending from around the district. Click here or copy and paste to see part of an interview:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ShopSouthLakeTV#play/uploads/5/i5JkxyZdOtY
The Congresswoman led a panel presentation consisting of local health care professionals taking a crack at what change to our health care delivery system might look like in the future. In this particular meeting the discussion was for the most part from 10,000 feet and the questions (they were submitted in writing as you entered the facility) were not as explosive and controversial as some of the town hall meetings witnessed on Youtube.com or seen and read about across the blogosphere.
After the meeting the Congresswoman presented the same panel discussion to about 40 health care professionals here at our Chamber offices at Jenkins Auditorium. The smaller crowd of people that work every day to deliver health care to the masses had very thoughtful and insightful questions and concerns about where the legislation might be taking us.
What I got from all of this is that the devil is still in the details and it doesn’t seem as if we are there at ground level yet as to the every day mechanics of what change to the system might look like, although there was a clear message to take it slowly, get it right if you do anything, fix long standing issues with Medicare and Medicaid first, protect the doctor/patient relationship, and lower costs by improving areas such as electronic medical files, administrative streamlining, tort reform - read Doctor medical liability insurance rates - and other items that have been discussed for years and that don’t evoke as much fear and concern in the electorate as is happening currently. This is one of those …to be continued… sagas.
On a closing note, there has been a firestorm in Florida on Governor Charlie Crist’s appointment of former Deputy Attorney General (and Crist’s own former Chief of Staff) George LeMieux, to fill the US Senate seat vacated recently by Mel Martinez. Governor Crist has been hammered from the right and the left, Republicans and Democrats alike on his choice that many feel he made so that he will have a clearer path to that Senate seat for himself during the next election cycle. It remains to be seen how long the memories are of Florida voters and what will happen during the primary slugfest between the Governor and Marco Rubio, a South Florida political rising star. Looks like another …to be continued… to put on the watchlist.
