If you don’t already, go now and sign up for Jeanne Scott’s newsletter on health care inside the beltway at her new site, right click on http://www.health-politics.com. Now you’ve done that let me tell you a bit about her.  She just retired from over 10 years at CIS, then NDC and is the best source of knowledge on HIPAA, politics inside the beltway and anything touching health care policy. You get the dirty sausage-making aspect of politics from Jeanne, but you also get highly considered and understandable background, and logical opinions on what’s likely to happen when push comes to shove.  All that and an endless supply of lawyer jokes!  Now she’s officically independent, I’m hoping that her newsletters will get even more "explicit", but they weren’t exactly quiet before. Plus go read her explanation of what’s going on in the House versus Senate Medicare Drug debate/bill settlement feud (so I don’t have to repeat it all when I write about it!)

My favorite Jeanne line comes from a few years back.  I had her as a speaker at an IFTF meeting, and she talked very amusingly in great detail about the then new HIPPA transaction laws.  One client asked her why HCFA (now CM3/CMS) had set the fines for HIPAA violations so low.  Quick as a flash she replied – "That’s all they can afford!"