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With 'Obamacare' Kicking In, Microsoft Sees a Health-Data Windfall
curtwoodward writes "Now that President Obama's federal health care reform is past its major political hurdles — and with renewed focus on out-of-control costs in healthcare — companies that sell 'big data' software are licking their chops. The reason: Healthcare has huge piles of information that is being used in new ways, to track patient admissions, spending, and much more. From hospitals to insurance companies, they'll all need new ways of crunching those numbers. It's basically an entirely new field that will dwarf the spending growth in traditional data-heavy industries like finance, retail and marketing, a Microsoft regional sales GM says."
Is the absolute worst fucking buzzword out there right now. It is a great way to figure out someone is a complete idiot right off the bat.
4) Pay for step 2
Rail against the out-of-control government that gives us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and summarily executes US citizens.
Then cheer it on when it takes over 1/6 of the US economy?
And you claim to care about your rights and freedoms?
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO GIVE THAT OVERWEENING GOVERNMENT THAT MUCH *MORE* POWER?!?!?!
You'll lobby the government to update everything to metro and get a big nice juicy contract.
US system is FUBAR, 50million uninsured, huge numbers of medical induced bankruptcies (for the heinous crime of being unlucky), lower life expectancy.
Nationalised single payer with optional extra private coverage is demonstrably cheaper and has (on average) better outcomes. Anyone with half a brain would get behind establishing it in the US. Oh and while you are at it do something about malpractice tort reform - the major cause of excessive medical costs.
What big health care data? I'm not joking when I saw that the last place I would ever trust sensitive or critical information is a hospital...
What big health care data you ask? The data that your government (also known as your new healthcare provider) is going to demand, that's what data.
From how fast you drive to how much fattening butter (in grams, weighed by the smart container that reported it to your smart fridge), expect data to be collected everywhere. Isn't it ironic how the hipsters think all this new smart tech is really "cool" today, without even thinking of the consequences in the future.
And expect that data to be used against you, to charge you more for the lifestyle you want.
As far as security goes, no comment when it comes to our government. InfoSec seems to be the least of their concerns, especially when it's your data.
Rail against the out-of-control government that gives us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and summarily executes US citizens.
Then cheer it on when it takes over 1/6 of the US economy?
And you claim to care about your rights and freedoms?
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO GIVE THAT OVERWEENING GOVERNMENT THAT MUCH *MORE* POWER?!?!?!
UK Economy: $2.4 trillion
UK Heath expenditure: under $200 billion.
That's 1/12th of the economy, sounds like you overspend on your health system. Shouldn't the competition keep prices down?
i work at a major medical research institution. A few years ago, our CIO showed us a graph of data they'd gone through showing a large spike in heart attacks in otherwise healthy men. The spike then dropped a few years later. Normally someone wouldn't be looking at this data, so it wasn't until after the spike was gone that this was investigated. Turned out that Vioxx had been put on the market about a year before the spike started, and was pulled off the market about 6 months or so before the spike dropped off.
Getting massive amounts of data (anonymized of course) can show trends in public health that can give us a lot of information and save lives and money.
(and yes, I hate the term 'big data'. No sense of scale of how big it is.)
There are lots of other government transfer programs that tax the young to pay for the old. It only "works" until the demographic shift inherent to an aging population gets bad enough that there aren't enough young people paying taxes to support the old people. Then you either move the age to qualify for benefits up or you run up massive deficits.
Is the absolute worst fucking buzzword out there right now
The worst buzzword out there is, without a doubt, "Obamacare". This clusterfuck of an industry bailout bill has pretty well no resemblance to health care reform, or to any of what Obama actually wanted to do.
It is a great way to figure out someone is a complete idiot right off the bat.
br? That is also true about people who use the word "Obamacare".
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Hospitals aren't buying into software because of "Obamacare" (or the Affordable Care Act, if brevity isn't your thing). Hospitals are buying into software because of the HITECH act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). They're getting more Medicare reimbursement for showing meaningful use of their software, so that's the trigger, not the ACA.
What you are saying happens on both sides, but disagreeing with the effectiveness of a single payer health care system is about as pants-on-head retarded as it gets. There is so much proof for its greater effectiveness WITH lesser costs that arguing against it is... frankly clinging to an ideology thats been totally disproven in multiple countries by multiple different types of government, presiding over multiple different cultures.
All it boils down to is "We can't do that becuz thats the cumminists. If we do that they win!"
Additionally conservative media in the U.S. can't even back up its crazy lines anymore without generating extremely biased(or in some cases completely fabricated) studies. Its gone beyond the point of retardation to the point where it seems like the conservative movement in the U.S. is actually trying to do as much DAMAGE as possible to the U.S.
Reality check: Cold war is over. Both sides lost. Get over it. Merits to be found in both forms of government. Take the best of both sides and be happier.
Hopefully at some point our country peacefully separates into two (or more) new countries so that the sensible and logical people can have single payer health care and the others can yell at each other about pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.
You can always move to Canada or England if you think they are so much better
That is a very common statement, but why do I need to leave? Why can't I help change the system and then other people can leave? Why are you the one who deserves to stay?
On top of that, the people who say things like "why don't you just go leave and live in Canada or the UK" often have no idea how difficult it is to do that. I am a highly qualified worker but I need a job offer in one of those countries in order to move there - I can't just show up and declare myself to be living there. Conversely, the conservative free-market havens like Somalia and Afghanistan tend to require almost nothing in order to live there, so why don't you leave instead?
It always amazes me that liberals complain that conservatives want to run their life
Well considering how the conservatives in government are constantly impeding on my ability to live my life, I would say they are indeed telling me how to run my life.
it is the liberals who are demanding that everyone follows their rules
Single payer health care does not demand you follow any new rules. If every other industrialized country in the world is any example, it would actually result in you keeping more of your earned income than what you currently keep - and it will still allow you to die from preventable ailments if you choose to do so.
And when you don't agree with the liberal it goes right to name calling.
Considering they way you are already throwing around unsubstantiated assumptions I would say you have already gone to name calling.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Bullshit.
They only appear diametrically opposed if you're a moron. The reality is that people will be forced to pay into the system if they have the money rather than waiting until they get sick to get insurance so they'll at least be contributing something rather than being overwhelmed by bills and declaring bankruptcy. What's more, we're already starting to see checks mailed out to people whose health insurer charged too much for premiums. My insurer was pretty good at estimating the real costs so my check was pretty small. But for other people the checks were a lot larger.
Obamacare also mandates that insurance companies pay for preventative care, you know the care that prevents serious and expensive conditions from occurring or at least reduces the likelihood of such conditions occurring. The US pays a crap load of money for preventable diseases to people who haven't been able to afford coverage and have to wait until they have a serious illness before seeking help or worry about whether or not their trip to the hospital for a possible heart attack is going to be covered.
As far as the historical, that's not the government that's because morons like you vote for corporatists with no interest in keeping costs down if it means corporate interests and the rich suffer. Every other country that's gone with universal healthcare has lower costs than we do, if we screw that up, you can blame the GOP for corporate welfare.
You happen to live in a civilized country, mate. I don't think you can communicate that notion to the "gubbermint is evil and has the only goal to steal taxes from me as an end in itself"-crowd.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.