Had he been agreeable, he could have been a king.

There have been people who have truly served the public over many years. John Quincy Adams comes to mind. But look at Obama and Biden. They have been hacks most of their adult lives. Politics is the only game they know.

But there are a lot of bright people in the public sector who know politics rather well and also know what is wrong with the system. Steve Forbes comes to mind.

It might be a novel experience for him.

ask Mike if he knows that he voted for a federal tax on cow farts.

ask Mike if he knows that he voted require every homeowner to pay for an Energy Audit as a condition of selling their home.

A complete medical record for an individual could be stored in an inexpensive ‘thumb drive’ and involve a cost of a few dollars per person. Data storage is very cheap and getting cheaper.

There have been some great advances in clinical laboratory automation and some of these date back to the 1970s. I spent a few years at a pioneering firm and the technology allowed a hospital to reduce per-patient cost and reduce the chance of mistakes. A lot of firms made automated instruments and my employer linked the equipment together in a local network for a hospital. Some of our development was supported by insurers as well as private hospitals. Our Bethesda, Maryland facility did a lot of work for NIH in automating urinalysis and hematology. We were even tasked by the PHS to write a book on the topic. An effort was proposed to improve the automated evaluation of electrocardiograms. The existing program needed a mainframe computer of the day and had some internal flaws that we would eliminate. Our approach would have used smaller and cheaper minicomputers in the era before personal computers became ubiquitous.

There are many things to like about Congressmen Castle so it is all the more disapointing when he lets us down on key issues like the Waxman/Markey bill. If he gets an opportunity to undo the damage created by that choice I hope he takes it.