January 22nd, 2009
$20 billion is the number on health IT stimulus
The U.S. House has put a number on the amount of health IT in the President’s stimulus package.
Of course, the contradictions inherent in health IT, between access to data and privacy, have come along for the ride.
In our present health system, with its underwriting standards and infinite detail aimed at maximizing income while minimizing outgo, employers and insurers have a big incentive to learn all they can about your private health information.
In a universal system, as described by today’s New England Journal of Medicine, those incentives disappear. Everyone pays the same (even if some pay with a subsidy), everyone gets the same coverage, and those incentives to snoop no longer exist.
As long as those incentives remain privacy concerns will win-out and health IT is going to lose. At least among Democrats.
Which means if health IT providers want to see that $20 billion they may have to go against the interests of their best customers.
The health IT industry is now squarely east of the rock and west of the hard place.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 01/22/09
