Posted on 08/21/2009 6:48:26 AM PDT by La Lydia
The Obama administration unveiled $1.2 billion in federal grants for electronic health records systems on Thursday, the first wave of funding under a health-care reform plan to create vast records-sharing networks aimed at cutting costs and improving care in the coming decade. The administration has described such computer systems as a crucial step in overhauling the nation's expensive health-care system. It allocated more than $36 billion in the landmark stimulus legislation to spur adoption of the equipment by doctors and hospitals along with the development of the networks that will link them all together...
...about half the grant money would help establish 70 technology-extension centers that will assist hospitals and other medical providers in choosing and utilizing the equipment. The rest is directed to state initiatives to create or expand medical information sharing networks...
President Obama, White House advisers and some advocates have said the adoption of the computer systems could help transform a system that is still remarkably reliant on paper and pens. Advocates say that proper use of digital records would make health care more efficient, cutting down on duplicative tests, unneeded procedures and harmful drug interactions.
Some studies have estimated that the universal adoption of electronic health technology could save more than $77 billion a year, a figure that the Obama administration has used widely to justify the plan. But the Office of Management and Budget has questioned the validity of that research, in part because of the complexity and unknowns involved in implementing such massive networks quickly and, in many cases, virtually from scratch...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Wait till someone gets a hold of that information, like they do currently with credit card data.
Data, then anticipatory quotas, then quotas with bonuses.
Bingo. There must be 36 years of invocation of abortion as justified by the “right to privacy” and prohibition of anything that “comes between a woman and her doctor.” How that history squares with what has been proposed is a little unclear. I would expect that as Democrats move toward an actual vote on an actual final bill - there will be language inserted that provides a special set of exceptions for abortion.
This was a goal of HIPAA, past by Congress 13 years ago. You can see how far they've gotten in this grand scheme.
Many of the consultants that made huge bucks from HIPPA in the late nineties and produced practically nothing will get a second chance to draw from the well.
There is another thread on FR today that addresses this. Read the entire WaPo article that is excerpted there.
Sorry, I forgot to mention this.
In order for this nation-wide electronic medical records system to work, each patient will need a unique ID.
Can you say hello to a national ID card?* And they will, no doubt, try and stick much of your medical records on one or more magnetic stripes on the card.
The thieves, hackers and general bad guys will have a field day with this.
*The impracticality of this stymied much of what HIPAA was to become.
The list, ping
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