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Obama Proposes Digital Health Records
An anonymous reader writes "'President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.' The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of $75 to $100 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."
I'll hold my judgment on whether digital records are a good idea, but I'm fascinated by the attempt at sugar coating the cost of this program. 212,000 jobs? Great, that's enough to put half the people entering welfare last week alone back to work, a few years from now. And it's only going to cost $100 billion during an economic crisis? Sounds like a bargain to me!
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Insurance companies don't want to pay for it, so the government decides that "digital" medical records will create zillions of jobs, help the economy, and other BS and ZING there goes another 100 billion.
"Alternative" energy suppliers don't want to pay for their own R&D and infrastructure so they need the government to promise zillions of jobs and ZING, there goes 100 billion.
Why should insurance companies have to pay for something that would benefit them when big-daddy government will take advantage of this massive over-blown economic recession to shuttle trillions of your dollars. Why wouldn't government use an opportunity to create another database with information about you that you have the "patriotic" duty to pay for?
I'm pretty sure this is just sticking to the government playbook.
The only thing digital records will do is make it easier to write a bot that will be able to download millions of medical records instead of having to do it one at a time.
Personally, I don't want "digital" records of my medical information. I'd prefer a good old folder filled with notes and paper and information such as that. I'd like to go to a doctor and NOT have my medical history completely available to him/her so I can get an actual diagnosis rather than just making assumptions because the last 6 morons have all said the same things. I want to be able to say that no, I didn't have an MRI, let's do another one with a different set of eyes, not my MRI following me everywhere so no one feels the urge to do a new one.
I like forcing my doctor to listen to the words coming out of my mouth about a medical issue, not running my big XML record through a parser to make a "guess" of what I have and print me a receipt for a prescription pill that isn't going to help me, but will bounce up against a marketing database to see what latest Pfizer development I should take. I'm sure in order to "streamline" and "reduce expences" of medical care, the government will pass the "Patient Free Choice Act" that will offer prescription medicine through kiosks ("Just Type In Your Medical Id Number") so you can get the Pfizer dream-pill of their choice ("No doctor needed!").
We're separated enough from our doctors because of insurance companies and government regulation as it is, I don't see the slightest benefit to making it easier for me to be ignored and shoved through the "in-and-out-burger" medical system by speeding me through the system.
Creating digital records is going to just make it more cost effective for insurance companies (and government medical rationing requirements once "nationalized" medicine comes into effect) to categorize you, treat you as a "group" of patients instead of an individual.
The "benefit" of easily shuttling your records around place to place in a standardized format would be great, if I had the slightest hope that it would be used strictly for that, and not completely abused for purposes that negatively affect me.
I mean, it's not like a social security number has been used in any way other than the purpose for which it was intended.
I'm a satanic clam.
He's down with Big Brother - did anyone expect anything else? What the hell does Obama care, his family is set for life.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.