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Medicare Bills Rise As Records Turn Electronic
theodp writes "As part of the economic stimulus program, the Obama administration put into effect a Bush-era incentive program that provides tens of billions of dollars for physicians and hospitals that make the switch to electronic records, using systems like Athenahealth [note: video advertisement] (which made U.S. CTO Todd Park a wealthy man). The goal was not only to improve efficiency and patient safety, but also to reduce health care costs. But, in reality, the move to electronic health records may be contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care. Hospitals received $1 billion more in Medicare reimbursements in 2010 than they did five years earlier, at least in part by changing the billing codes they assign to patients in emergency rooms, according to a NY Times analysis. There are also fears that features which can be used to automatically generate detailed patient histories and clone examination findings for multiple patients make it too easy to give the appearance that more thorough exams were conducted than perhaps were. Critics say the abuses are widespread. 'It's like doping and bicycling,' said Dr. Donald W. Simborg. 'Everybody knows it's going on.'"
Pretty much all mainstream and big media is conservative on Economics any more.
It may seem that way but only if your own views are slightly to the left of Lenin. The reality is that the mainstream media is still Keynesian, i.e. in favor of heavy government intervention. NYT still has the discredited loon Krugman as their economics expert for God's sake, how supply side is that? The only real pro-capitalism program that I know of is Stossel on Fox Business channel and that's hardly mainstream media.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
What is such insightful and well reasoned opinion doing in slashdot? You ma'am must be new here.
Please read the above, world. I have to share a country with blathering morons like this. Again, it is embarrassing, I apologize.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it