It’s time for another installment of the Rhubarb Report. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that this week’s Report has a few fine political morsels. But it also has a note of passing, and a thank you card attached.

With that said, let’s dive right in to Episode 45.

1. From the pit-of-your-stomach, sounds-wrong-because-it-probably-is department, I bring you Mitt Romney and his tax records. Actually, I bring you one – no, sorry, make that almost two – years of tax returns from the presidential candidate.

Two years of returns. That’s it. Why not more? Is there something hiding in there? Let’s face it - if there wasn’t anything to hide, the easiest way to put this issue to rest once and for all would be to release more returns to the public. Simple. Unless, of course, there is something to hide.

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It's not just a Republican thing. And it's not just a Democrat thing.

When you get right down to it, consumer access to physical therapy could - and should - be an issue with bipartisan support nationwide. Both sides of the aisle should absolutely love it for very different reasons.

But it becomes readily apparent that they don't - at least not consistently from state to state. With a mid-term federal election cycle and plenty of state-wide elections soon to be upon us again, it would be helpful to understand why.

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I would have to admit that it is, at first, an odd phrase to utter: the Rolling Stones are 50 years old. Say what? Seriously? Hard to believe, isn’t it? Queen Elizabeth II just celebrated 60 years on the throne. Now, the Rolling Stones celebrate their golden jubilee, with 50 years on the throne as the undisputed kings of rock and roll.

In 1974, they said “it’s only rock and roll”. Little did they know just what rock and roll would mean to the culture as a whole over the past 5 decades.

We can thank the Stones for bringing the blues to mainstream awareness. It started with the name – derived from a Muddy Waters song. The blues inflections didn’t stop there though. Their earlier music had that greasy, behind-the-beat vibe of the blues greats. Somehow, they translated this feel into some of the greatest rock and roll songs of our era. A Jagger – Richards song can be a thing of beauty, and only 3 or 4 chords total.

A good band might put out some good albums, but the real test is in the live performances. After all these years, this is what continues to be the life blood of the Rolling Stones.

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In health care, there is much talk of control. One of the biggest issues is controlling the spiraling cost of care.

In the same breath, we have become transfixed by outcomes for any given episode of care. This is thought to help control costs – the costs that are faced right now, what I call the upstream costs.

But over the long-term, the control we need to discuss is locus of control. This is the control that will ultimately provide health care with true, epic reform.

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