Presidential Candidates Address IHN Leadership Summit Conference

Canton, Ohio - Eight candidates seeking to be the next President of the United States were present to speak before the Independent Hospital Network Leadership Summit Conference in Canton on Friday, January 11.

Here’s a summary of the events from a roving reporter’s first-hand perspective.

Taking time out before heading off to the primary in Michigan, four of the leading Democratic and Republican Presidential hopefuls presented their Healthcare Reform Plans to delegates from the Independent Hospital Network.

Hillary Clinton opened, and clearly let her emotions of the campaign process show when she started talking about the strain of campaigning and then quickly regrouped to focus on a hardluck story about how our healthcare system failed a man whose life was destroyed by the current system. She said that what he had worked a lifetime to achieve, was ruined after he lost his job and then suffered a heart attack; both of which ultimately led to the loss of his life savings. Hillary said that because of our flawed health system, this man, yes, is still alive, but everything that he has worked for is all gone.. Hillary, like two of her fellow Democratic colleagues, is pushing both a private and public platform of change.

Rudy Giuliani, on the other hand, said he prefers a market place approach to fixing our nation’s health woes. In a lighter moment, he said he really had to question why our legislators seem to be spending more time worrying about sports and steroids than healthcare. He asked that we focus more on the health of the nation and a little less on the well-being of the Yankees.

I believe “Huck” was up next,(by the way, I failed to mention that none other than Chris Matthews from NBC’s Hardball was our MC). I must admit I liked Mike Huckabee’s remark that people need to be more responsible for their own health and that a consumer- driven model makes a lot of sense.

More to come from this reporter on today’s events, but that will have to wait until tomorrow…I have some scheduled meetings and our team is working on gathering consumer information… a story for another day.

At the end of today, however, we did take a straw vote-- just based on the Healthcare Reform issue. I will share those results in a future blog.

Talk to you soon.

Stan