“Imagine a way to take cow manure and
turn it into electricity. Imagine taking a something we need to get
rid of on the farm and turning it into something that makes money.
Imagine a way to create manufacturing jobs in Western Wisconsin and
keep our environment clean.”

This is message I brought to several
hundred dairy farmers gathering in Madison this past week. I know it
sounds like science fiction, but it is a real world technology that
has a lot of people excited. It’s called anaerobic digestion.

We have a lot of cows in Wisconsin-
about 1.3 million of them and they generate a lot of manure.
Managing that manure is often a challenge for farmers. Some dairy
farmers have discovered installing anaerobic digesters on their farms
is a whole new way to deal with their cow manure.

This week I was contacted by a gentleman whose health insurance costs are eating up nearly a quarter of his take home income. He writes, “I believe I will have to drop my $468 premium per month health insurance starting in November.”

While problems in the financial market and the presidential campaign take center stage in the press, the problems in the lives of real people continue to focus on health care – especially rising costs.

Concerns make their way to my office in many forms: work injuries not covered by employers, businesses looking at double-digit inflation in premiums every year, employees with dependents not covered, people without insurance delaying care who later discover serious illness.

Senator Kathleen Vinehout

“We have a hearing scheduled for this week,” I shared with a friend. She replied that she thought the Legislature was not in session and all the bills died. “This is not a hearing about a bill,” I said. “It is a hearing on an administrative rule.”

“A hearing on an administrative rule? What’s a rule?” she asked me.

Just like a hearing on a bill, an administrative rule hearing is an opportunity for the public to provide input into the making of policy. Last Thursday, the Senate Committee on Health, Human Services, Insurance and Job Creation convened to consider an administrative rule.

Editor Note - This begins a new feature on Uppity Wisconsin, where legislators will begin submitting blog entries and op-ed features to the blog.  Let us know what you think - we'll start out with State Senator Kathleen Vinehout's column on Health Care Reform.

“We have got to figure out how to fix health care. I think we need to look at what we are doing other places.” The man called my office to share ideas on how to reform health care. “Yes,” I agreed.

What have we done in other places? My constituent was thinking about ideas like workers compensation, unemployment compensation and the state employees’ health plan. Wisconsin has several examples of initiatives taken to solve insurance problems. But so have other states and Wisconsin is actually lagging behind many of those states.