It’s all about transparency

By Robin Marty
Wednesday, August 23, 2006 at 9:16 am

President Bush came to town to talk healthcare transparency and got right to the heart of the matter as only he can:

So one of these days, you’re going to have all your medical records on a little key that you can then plug into a computer, and all of a sudden, information is at the provider’s fingertips, which makes the system a lot more efficient, which means less costly, but also saves on medical errors. But the problem we face is that the — we’ve got to develop a standard language. Medicine is a fairly complicated — got a complicated dictionary, let’s put it that way.

Not everyone in the area was happy about the visit, including those who had been invited to the event:

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There are only a handful of homes along Bracketts Point, big homes with big lots sweeping down to big water where big boats stand ready. But as far as Hannaford had heard, only two of her neighbors were hoping to see the president.
“I don’t know anybody who’s going,” Hannaford said, nodding toward the end of the leafy peninsula that juts out into Lake Minnetonka between Smith and Browns Bays.
The protest signs were made by Hannaford’s daughter, Mary Connolly, a high school senior. “We Believe in Global Warming” one sign said. “You Should, Too,” said the second.
The cops wouldn’t let Mary put up her polite signs until they could verify that she lived on Bracketts Point. Their heads probably are still spinning. A protest on the point.

As for the $500,000 raised at this event, I find myself looking back at the $1 million raised when Kennedy was visitied by the President last December and wondering, “Does this mean the president is only half as appealing now?”

Gil Gutknecht won his battle to stay on the ballot, but Judge Alan Page was struck by the fact that there is a different standard for non-major parties than for those with major party status.

He may be on the ballot, but that doesn’t signal the end of his troubles….

Rep. Gil Gutknecht is moving up in the national charts, and that’s not necessarily good news for him.
Gutknecht, R-Minn., is involved in the 39th hottest House race in the nation, according to the latest rankings by National Journal. In its previous ranking, the face-off against Democrat Tim Walz was considered the 46th hottest in the country.