Obama's Inflated Health Savings

[dgriffin]

Obama's Inflated Health "Savings"

June 16, 2008

He claims that a shift to electronic medical records will help save families up to $2,500 a year in his first term. Independent experts say that's wishful thinking.

Many, if not most, health care experts and professionals agree that the use of electronic health records or health IT would have various benefits, in terms of quality of care as well as spending. But doctors and hospitals in the U.S. have been slow to adopt it for several reasons. Whether Obama can effectively bring about widespread adoption and large savings is an open question and not as concrete as his pronouncements imply.

At Fact Check.org:

www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_inflated_health_savings.html

[clarencebunsen]

Has anyone anywhere ever seen massive short term savings from the introduction of new computer technology?

Would everyone who depends on a corporate network and has not had a problem accessing something vital please raise their hands?

Most of us can deal with loss of internet service for a day or so with no real harm. If a hospital pharmacy's computer glitches, time to disaster is what, an hour maybe?

Perhaps we could turn this program over to the people who have been redesigning the Air Traffic control system for the past 20 years.

I am not opposed to up grading health IT, it has been happening for a least a couple decades, but it doesn't happen easily or quickly.

For just one reason see this.
apnews.myway.com/article/20080423/D90791RO0.html

[dgriffin]

I can't imagine opening myself up to email were I a physician. Or attorney or veterinarian.
That aside, I'd bet upgraded technology in medical records has its advantages and disadvantages. My pure guess is that there would be more disadvantages. Privacy comes to mind first and second is the tendency for automated systems to proliferate and quickly grow in scope until entirely too many decisions are made on the data alone. Information that at one time was not important, when rolled into super databases on a large scale, will begin to influence decisions where it never did before. E.g., it's a negligible cost if you squirt a little extra ketchup on your burger at Phil's Roadkill Snack Stand. But if you're MacDonalds, it's a multi-million dollar problem. Giving me an extra bandaid in the ER was no problem, until the ER's became part of a huge consortium of hospitals. And when the slight statistical tendency of folks like me with light complexions to get skin cancer gets rolled into the massive numbers of all Americans and viewed as an annual cost of billions, expect my insurance carrier to start charging me more for coverage ... a Freckles Tax.

[frankcor]

On the other hand, if, through careful data-mining, you can be a more efficient organization, you make more money and resource available to be applied where it counts -- on the patient. It means more bang for the buck, so to speak.

[dgriffin]

As an hysterical "shoot-the-f**kers" insurance company foe, I'd bet the efficiencies would go into corporate pockets. But then, I do get hysterical. It's the freckles.

[frankcor]

Profits are not inherently evil, Dave.

[dgriffin]

Evil, evil EVIL !! Oh, well, You're right, of course, Frank. But when a company inflates their profits on the misfortune of others ... patients or providers ... I get upset. There are worse examples, and I should count myself lucky, but Blue Cross won't pay for medicines that my doctor and I would prefer, so I take those that don't work as well. I assume that the dollar difference winds up in corporate coffers and executive pockets.

[frankcor]

Well, yeah, it burns my butt that I have to take medicines for which the patents haven't expired and for which there are no generic substitutes. But, some of that dollar difference also pays to discover the next new miracle drugs. It's definitely not a perfect system but it's the best one in the world.

[dgriffin]

Definitely not perfect. One thing the profit system in pharmaceuticals doesn't allow for ... no I am not now nor have I ever been a communist, Senator ... is research toward drugs for some really vicious diseases in third world countries that won't provide a decent (or indecent) ROI. But I think the companies have said they may be working on a solution to that problem.
BTW, I am not at all against profit. It is what makes the system work. But today's corporate structure and executive compensation plans, working through the action of the stock market, provide ample opportunity for executives to misuse the system by stacking their boards with cronies and playing the system for their own, rather than their company's, benefit. I follow the situation at IBM. In the last few years, executives at that corporation have "removed" millions of dollars from the business and paid it to themselves. In one past year, I don't remember which, the employee pension fund earned almost 20 percent of the company's reported "profit." Without this, the company's earnings would have been considered lackluster at best. Despite this, executives voted themselves millions of dollars in bonuses for a "job well done," and refused to increase employee pension payments, which they have not done since 1994. In fact, the company no longer provides pensions to employees hired after the mid nineties.
Full Disclosure: I am disgruntled.

[frankcor]

Your gruntledness is noted, Dave. I'll admit it has some justification.