We've Come For Your Health Records · Fri Jul 28, 02:01 PM by Martin H. Bosworth

Apparently constructing a nationwide database of college education records isn’t enough for this Congress. Now they want to accelerate the sharing of health records as well:

“Realistically, the government’s not going to pay for this. The system’s going to do it…because it creates system efficiencies that pays the system back,” said Connecticut Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson, who sponsored the bill.

The system pays the system which pays for the system? Can anyone figure that out?

In principle, I’m all in favor of interoperability of health records, as it will make critical information available to physicians and ensure better treatment for patients who won’t need to cut through mountains of red tape to get diagnoses or share medical histories. But the problem is, as always, execution.

$40 million isn’t going to cut it by a long shot. When you underfund something like this, the states and municipalities are either going to have to design a system themselves (which completely defeats the purpose of interoperability), or go begging to some private database proker to provide them the structure they need. Hmmm….now who do you think might be available?

As far as privacy goes, it’s all I can do to even manage a weary shrug at the idea of making someone’s medical history so transparent and available for public use. It’s bad enough that medical debt ends up on credit reports, but this would make you an open book in terms of your health. And that’s just something we don’t need to see.

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