Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Yeah, except as I understand it, HIPAA was initially about electronic transaction standards, not about privacy and security. Think W3C, XML, SOAP, etc. only substitute older acronyms: EDI, X12, VAN. The regulators had the option to choose XML back in 98, but opted for ANSI X12 because "it's American." X12 also was the comfy backyard of the insurance payer community, who was driving the standards process. So now we're dealing with a bottom-up standards implementation, trying to apply a small group's theoretical constructs to very real-world systems. Truth is, healthcare is CRYING out for standards, but you can't drive the standards from one side of the trading partner fence. I don't want to cast lots of nasty aspersions on anyone, because a lot of good intentions are coded into this law, and I've found people on all sides really want it to work to reduce the cost of healthcare. But in the short run it's going to raise it, unless a number of things happen between now and October. Some good things have already happened, though they happened in the background.

And by the way, I am trying to use the collaborative power of the blog to help head off the train wreck. Anybody want to send me some helpful info on getting an MT site set up, when my ISP can't meet the specs? TypePad is not online yet, and I don't have time to learn MySQL, etc.

i am an idiot and i am lead by richard simmons