How about we get GOVERNMENT OUTTA HEALTH CARE!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good to have *minimal* govt involvement in health care, so while Frist's ideas have enormous merit, the govt should serve only as a broker/facilitator/test-bed funder of the best ideas toward making this vision happen.
Beyond proof of concept, the dollars ought to be spent by the private sector only. I think there is a place for govt to fund high risk/high reward ideas that industry might not otherwise; this seems like a prime example. (But let me stress that, unlike the space program, I'd like to see the dollars spent limited by ORDERS of magnitude! Proof-of-concept needs to be carefully circumscribed...)
The govt can also be helpful by assisting with various indemnifications and tort reform--isn't this the point? The structural defect in healthcare torts should be obvious to one and all: countless people suffer because of stone-age healthcare IT record-keeping and information coordination, yet tort lawyers have no deep pockets to punish, so they can do nothing to fix the problem. (Yes, I know, GAG, shows just how despicable the tort leeches are).
What I'd most hate to see is that this vision becomes the sugar that speeds universal health care (cough, rationing, cough) down the throats of the american people. Wasn't the revolutionary cry 'give me LIBERTY or give me death'? Yammering for govt control of healthcare is kind of like saying, Give me SLAVERY (to crappy healthcare), or in other words, death!
Hmmm, not a bad tagline...