A brief overview of the observations in the inner corona is presented together with three different solar wind models. It is shown that the very high flow speeds derived from the observations in the inner corona can be modeled if either the proton temperature is extremely high, or if there exists a mechanism that adds momentum to the flow much closer to the coronal base than in traditional Alfven wave driven models. These high flow speeds and the possibility that the proton temperature is very high have an influence on observations used to infer plasma parameters in the inner corona. This point is illustrated choosing the line ratio density diagnostic as an example.