One Degree of Separation: Obama
You know I’m pretty sure I’ll never meet Obama, but if I did I’d probably say something really stupid and/or awkward. Or something really clever like “Yo.”
Really thinking about it is all academic (barely), but what would we say if we met a president is a question I think most people have asked themselves.
As you may have heard, in his attempt to destroy humanity and civilization as we know it,Obama is attempting to reform healthcare in the United States. In his quest for the best and brightest minds on the topic Obama called upon Tom Huntley, a nine-term DFL state representative from Duluth.
It isn’t surprising that the president would seek out someone with Huntley’s expertise. The 71-year-old Ph.D. biochemist taught at medical schools for 40 years, most of them at the University of Minnesota-Duluth School of Medicine. At the Legislature, he has chaired the House’s health care finance division since DFLers took control of the chamber in 2007.
What’s interesting is that the White House tapped someone with Huntley’s take on how to proceed with reform. More than any other DFLer in St. Paul, Huntley has been a champion of changing the way medicine is practiced and paid for, in order to control costs.
Huntley’s stock line is, “You’ve got to fix the system for the 93 percent in order to have money to serve the 7 percent” — that is, the share of the Minnesota population that lacks health insurance. For the nation, that share is closer to 16 percent.
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Huntley acknowledges that changing the way medicine is practiced is “very difficult.” But, he says, it’s “what we have to do.“If this doesn’t work, then you really will have a system where government sets the cost of everything. … I don’t think that’s good for anybody. That wouldn’t do anything for quality improvement. That’s the club that’s hanging out there.”
Way to go Tom Huntley!
I think this weekend I’ll stalk Mr.Huntley and interview him on what it was like hanging out with and meeting POTUS.
Do you have any questions for the honorable Rep. Huntley?
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I’d love to know more about how he thinks the practice of medicine should change.
My personal soapbox is that of maternity care in the US; we have an insanely high C-section rate and an insanely high rate of interventions (such as induction, etc.), yet we have a high infant and maternity mortality rate. The combination of the pressures of potential litigation, non-evidence-based care, the tendency of professional organizations like ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) and the AMA to treat pregnancy/childbirth as an illness that needs to be managed, insurance companies refusing to pay for midwives (even the CNM sort) but covering c-sections without batting an eyelash, etc. lead to this quagmire where we’re spending too much money for the poor outcomes we get compared to other countries where maternity care is entirely different. So I am particularly interested in any thoughts he has on this matter. It should concern anyone who is interested in health care in the US; Cesarean section is the most commonly performed surgery on American women, and it doesn’t come cheap, money- or health-wise.
@Tipper – That’s a good question. I wish I would have had it this weekend when I talked to Tom. It turns out he didn’t meet Obama when he was in D.C. and he mostly worked with staff. So it make my prepared interview obsolete and instead we talked about remodeling,gardening, the Tour de France, and other issues of serious consequence.
Maybe I can get him to address your concerns.