The Club format limits the speech and question/answer sections together to an hour. Good thing, as this right-wing Presidential wanna be was a yawner. An hour was more than enough.
Most of his prepared remarks were a laundry list of the current problems with health care delivery, including the inability to obtain affordable insurance. Frist was not particularly insightful and definitely not passionate-sounding. Worse, his solutions were basically more of the same with perhaps tax credits funding insurance company premiums, limited public care for uninsured children, and one (1) clinic per indigent county for everyone else who could not afford private insurance. Health care reform also seemed to be linked to doing something evil to those hated "trial lawyers" that are driving up costs so much and putting good doctors out of business. He also mentioned that ads for prescription drugs were driving up costs, too, but I didn't hear any suggested legislation for that issue. (Full text of his speech.)
At least he came to San Francisco, a good Christian braving the nasty lions (apparent Frist supporters in the row ahead of us were talking about the lions' den before I thought of the image.) His topic was vintage Democratic material, too. Unfortunately, his solutions are tepid and his delivery unexciting.
As much as I am a political junkie and collector of contacts with politicians, I hope I just didn't see the next President of the United States.
