The odd couple, Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and former Speaker Newt Gingrich got together today to promote electronic medical records. Sen. Clinton continues to fake with her right before throwing the left hook.
Clinton, D-N.Y., and Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, appeared outside the Capitol to promote a bill that would modernize medical record-keeping.
The senator joked that their joint effort has raised plenty of eyebrows since they began working together behind closed doors on a panel examining ways to improve military effectiveness.
"At our first meeting when we were agreeing so much with each other I think people thought: 'The End is Near,'" she said...
"I find he and I have a lot in common in the way we see the problems that we're going to have to deal with in order to have a 21st century health care system," said the senator.
Gingrich was equally effusive, saying he was "thrilled" to be part of the bipartisan effort to reduce the amount of paperwork the health care industry creates.
"I'm confident there are things like votes in the Senate and judges where there would be dramatic differences, but I think we're both mature enough as adults that we can separate this argument," said Gingrich.
"We're at the stage in our lives where getting some good things done for the country strikes us as a pretty important way to spend your time," he said.
There are several points to make. The first is that Sen. Clinton is seen publicly working with a former icon of the conservative movement, and it's likely another attempt to appear a centrist. She wants to be seen as a reasonable Democrat who is able to work with the Republicans, so she can point to that as she runs for President. I can hear the speech even now. "Newt Gingrich and I worked on..."
Second, EMR is a good thing, though we don't have it yet in my office or in my hospitals, but we would like to incorporate it in a new office when (hopefully) we move and expand. It will reduce errors, and once physicians and others in the system become accustomed to the technology people will wonder how we ever did without it.
But there is a significant transition cost to the technology, from installing the system and software, to backing up all your old paper records, to stalling the office functions while the users get up to speed. If the federal government is going to mandate this by a date certain but not provide funding for that transition it amounts to a huge business tax. In low reimbursement states like Massachusetts physician practices will suffer. That would be me.
On the other hand, if they want to assist with the cost we'd probably do it tomorrow.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notices the strange pairing, even borrowing the (obvious) moniker 'odd couple'. Again, this obviously works for Hillary since she can now look 'centrist', but why would Newt do it (unless he's also considering a run)?
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