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| Re: Who prefers Sanders to Hillary (1368634) | |||
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Re: Who prefers Sanders to Hillary |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Tue May 24 07:56:50 2016, in response to Re: Who prefers Sanders to Hillary, posted by bingbong on Tue May 24 00:54:45 2016. There's been an open source medical data management system around for 50 years. It's called MUMPS (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System) or sometimes M. It's widely but not universally used.Each insurance company, hospital, medical software company decided to go their own proprietary way. The result is hundreds different medical record systems are in use. The reason is people saw profit in developing their own systems to raise their cost base and their fees. These systems have no common data interchange mechanism. The result is the expensive and continuing chaos we have today. One ACA weakness was promoting electronic health records but not writing tight, rigorous technical specs for qualifying systems. The result is electronic health records have not and will not provide the cost savings and medical improvements that it does in other countries. A single payer system is one way to eliminate this wasteful, duplicative system. It's not the only path. Many countries implement universal health care through insurance companies. However, the companies are strictly regulated regarding coverage, record keeping, reimbursements and fees. The insurance companies compete with each other in the customer service sector. The physician and hospital costs for using these open source medical records programs in these countries is nominal compared to what has happened here. There is one system per country so data interchange is fairly simple. It's been around in the EU for at least 30 years. The software to accomplish the same task in the US is expensive because there are many more data systems that require interfacing. This is the system for whose abrupt demise you urge caution. Is there a similar "abrupt change" restriction on insurance companies vis-a-vis their customers? Nope. Insurance companies are still free to change coverage or get out of the business with little notice. Caveats: Curt Marble was a classmate and we lived in the same dorm. I was interested in the medical records problem in the late 1960's. I've watched with dismay the sad history of how this means for potential cost savings and health care improvements was perverted by corporate greed. My mother's Medicare Advantage policy was terminated with 30 days notice. It was mid way through her first major illness. |
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