I'm glad you are glad Obama is making things better. Digitizing veteran medical records is, in theory at least, a good thing, although until we know who has access to the digitized records and precisely what is in them, its goodness is in doubt. But for every small good thing, there is an avalanche of bad things. What has actually changed from the Bush years in terms of Constitutional protections? Nothing. What has actually changed in terms of foreign wars that make no sense? Nothing. Where are our tax dollars going? To Masters of the Universe. What do we get? Nothing. Face it - we were scammed by a Master. There is no hope at all; this country is run by Masters of the Universe for Masters of the Universe, and it's never going to change.

Electronic medical records aren't just important for veterans, but for the elderly and anyone with multiple diagnoses. The problem is that we talk about our healthcare "system" but there is no system. It's nothing more than a patchwork of providers and insurers with competing self-interests, bottom lines, and share holders -- none of which has anything to do with quality of care.

I'm all for private sector innovation and competition in most cases, but when it comes to health care it's simply not functional.

The VA is as close to a single-payer system as we have, and from all indications, it outperforms private sector care in terms of quality and cost -- but it's not independent of private sector care when it comes to records.

This right-wing paranoia that says government can do no good is killing us. Literally.

Malcolm, please fuck off.

Your "Obama is not better than Bush" rant was somewhat relevant in response to the post about closing CIA black site and stopping the use of outside contractors for interrogations. I agree with some of your specific complaints about his position on certain issues, but still think he is a far better choice than either Bush (who was out anyway) or McCain or Clinton (Hillary, not Bill).

Repeating yourself in the very next post, which is about a completely new topic where Obama's actions so far are completely appropriate, just makes you an asshole.

"One of the things I minded about the Bush administration was that they didn't seem at all interested in trying to get government to work better."

Actually, the Bush administration was intent on proving that government--even their version of government--doesn't work.

They knew people would later refer to their screw-ups as "the government," rather than the "Bush administration."

That's why it's important to specify "Bush administration."

h

beep52's comment above about the "patchwork of providers" identifies one part of the problem. The situation will get dramatically more complicated when software contractors try to write the specs to marry the systems - it will either require agencies to redesign their records systems from scratch or force a conjoining of the systems that will result in confusion from duplications and overlapping fields. Even worse will be the attempts to change the record-keeping traditions in obstinate and protective cultures, not to mention the high likelihood of failure of any large-scale data-warehousing implementation endeavor and the high likelihood of botching the security around private records.

I'm watching New Hampshire fail as they squander Federal money for merging law endorcement/rescue/emergency agencies databases due to the complexity of communicating between such disparate cultures. These types of projects have thwarted the IRS, airlines, many hospitals and other large organizations. We'll be reading headlines in 2012 that read "After many years and many millions of dollars..."

As a member of Kaiser Permenante medical group,I'm extremely impressed with their electronic record system.All x-rays,cat-scans,test results, office visits,medications-everything is available on-line.
I can go to any Kaiser facility and have all my records instantly available. That's the future and
it works

Thank you, Paul Riekhoff, for your tireless efforts in fighting for the rights of former service personnel, both combat and non-combat. You and other veteran groups helped stop the 3rd party insurance plans and kept the focus by the new administration on increasing funding and updating the records systems. Gen Shinseki could, also, get credit, for listening to your collectve voices as well as our new President. Shinseki appeared to be tacking to the right, but, your will helped correct that course.

"One of the things I minded about the Bush administration was that they didn't seem at all interested in trying to get government to work better."
I hate it when I have to defend the Bush administration. Some parts of it, anyway. They did ballyhoo their e-government initiatives. And they did try to evaluate the performance of government agencies (Google "PART program".) I happen to think neither were particularly effective. (Heritage just dissed the regulations.gov site.) But then, Gore's Reinventing Government wasn't a shining star either. It remains to be seen how much of an improvement Obama will be. He should be able to learn from Bush's mistakes, but to do that he and we need to recognize Bush's attempts.

As a member of Kaiser Permenante medical group, I'm extremely impressed with their electronic record system... - Palolo lolo

Yes, it is very glitzy but with all due respect, you have bought little more than eye candy. If you concede these are _your_ records, how much time and effort would it take you to get a copy of the X-RAY you viewed? Was it worth it? The very same system you gush about also works this way; Kaiser gets to decide which of your records you are allowed to have, if they don't even exist...so the wagons are circled and you must lawyer up for their kangaroo court otherwise "you will loose". Since that step alone preclude$ most of us, why bother with the rest of it.

If real reform actually takes place with health care, I would be stunned senseless if your right to records was changed in any meaningful way.

The situation will get dramatically more complicated when software contractors try to write the specs to marry the systems - DanZ

I don't know how many years ago but there was a large PR campaign for a well known company hyping documents. The irony here is they were already hyping their solutions and things can only of improved since then. Contrary to being more difficult to marry systems together, machines that generate tests spit out their results in an easy form to incorporate into databases. I think solutions companies will have to make it sound dramatically more complicated prior to bidding only to cover the security aspect. And we've had 8 years of "security" so that may not wear well either. Certainly big brother gets to look but do you? Call me sceptical (but I was forced here).

While Obama may have just announced this, this is an ongoing project. I have a friend who was hired to work on the VA project a couple months ago.