I work in healthcare. The VA has had programmers on staff for years developing an EMR that could be used interchangeably across the VA system. They have full-time programmers on staff.
They could have rolled this out nationally for free to all hospitals as a default program if they were truly interested in a national record (whether we want to go here or not - and we don’t - that’s a different issue).
Instead, they required hospitals to buy programs at a cost of $15-50 million to be compliant with the EMR mandate. (I’m not even talking about what doctors must buy, just hospitals).
Why force the buying of all this tech if they have a template in the VA system that they could have rolled out, for free?
Skin in the game.
Repeal Obamacare now, and every hospital in this country will scream about the millions they were forced to pour into this already. The intent here was to grow deep roots into Obamacare long before the official roll out at the barrel end of a very expensive mandate.
Your doctors and hospitals have been putting skin in this game for about 1.5 years now. They are full of very well connected local pols and movers and shakers.
These people don’t call their congresscritter. They sit down to meals with him.
And you wonder why it seems that even the pubbies aren’t particularly invested in standing up to this fight.
.....you wonder why even the pubbies aren’t particularly invested in standing up to this fight.......Repeal Obamacare now, and every hospital in this country will scream about the millions they were forced to pour into this. The intent here was to grow deep roots into Obamacare long before its official roll out at the barrel end of a very expensive (politically botched) mandate....doctors and hospitals have been putting skin in this game for about 1.5 years now.....(duped by) very well connected local pols, and movers and shakers.
Amazing to me that trained, highly-educated doctors and h/c professionals actually bought into this monstrosity----had no clue it would end up being a debacle. The sap-happy faith in the promises of deluded power-crazed pols like Obama is shocking.