President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time last night to lay out what he's done over the last 30 days or so and what he will do later this week. He also touched on some longer term goals.
The agenda, admittedly, is ambitious. Maybe too ambitious. The government can print so much money before it's all as worthless as that pastel-colored currency that comes packaged in Monopoly boxes. (They still have those, right?)
I tuned in last night to report on Obama's looming health care reform strategy. The good news is that it barely made the speech. The bad news is that we still have very little idea what to expect down the road.
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But that's OK, because we have enough to worry about right now with the administration's economic stimulus package. Tucked into the $787 billion legislation are costly changes to COBRA and incentives for electronic health record implementation, which are no doubt going to be just as expensive for providers. Make no mistake, this stuff is complex. (Do the feds make anything simple?)
To help you sort through it, we're opening a room at the Austin Renaissance and putting together a brand new session for our expo in April. We're bringing in a couple of industry pros to sift through the reams of legislation and explain to brokers and TPAs alike just how much more work you've inherited. We're still working out some of the details, so stay tuned. You won't want to miss this session.
Oh, and despite some technical gremlins, I managed to do a little live blogging during the president's speech last night. So take a look and let me know what you think.
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