I recently read "Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business & Bad Medicine" by Barlett and Steele. The book covered all the problems that you hear about in the news these days - medical errors, expensive drug costs, insurance claims, etc. Mostly though it focused on how market-driven health care is not working.
The last chapter offered a solution which we hear about often from politics - universal coverage run by a government council. Supposedly we could pay for this by standardization and "efficient computer technology". I loved this sentence: "To reduce medical errors dramatically, the council could oversee creation and operation of a single information technology system that links all health care players - hospitals, doctors' offices, pharmacies and nursing homes." Right (sense my sarcasm)... Currently there are RHIOs (Regional Health Information Organizations) working on this. Usually this means a couple of states are trying to coordinate their IT efforts. This is also a huge debate. I heard speakers last semester that were eagerly working on the Rocky Mtn region's RHIO, then I heard another speaker talk of how it is a waste of time because there are too many objectives and no incentive for any one organization to pay for it. I don't necessarily think gov't run universal coverage is a bad idea, but it is much more complicated then these authors led on; they are also very naive regarding IT systems.
The big health care debate is always summed up by considering access, cost and quality. One of the most interesting speakers I heard last semester said that all other countries have picked one of these as their main objective and that the US system won't improve until we decide what is our priority. Michael Moore recently released his new documentary on the health care system. I haven't seen it but have heard he focuses on how supposedly other countries have gotten it right - Canada, France, England and Cuba. From what I can tell - they've all chosen "access". However access may mean you're guaranteed coverage but go stand in line and wait for it.
