Chris

The number of people looking at records increases ten fold at hospitals. Let me reiterate one more time: the people providing healthcare are not the people dealing with the paper work. Furthermore, I suspect only a 10% reduction in paper records within the doctors offices but in hospitals and in record transit, digital channels should almost eradicate paper records. The data being sent around by Google is not even seen by Google employees or IT staff, it’s encrypted. Paper records are kept in clear text. Gaining access to the digital information would be much more risky, harder, and more traceable than just stealing the paper records. You don’t have to trust an IT guy at all.

With respect to your question about employer paid insurance, you have to first understand that most insurance is paid for by peoples’ employers. The employer pays a flat rate for blanket coverage of the employees and then the employees use the coverage when receiving medical attention. So the employer pays the insurance company and the insurance company pays the healthcare provider’s insurance company. The patient doesn’t shop around for healthcare (it could cost $50 for a strep test from one provider and $5,000 from another) and the employer is legally not allowed to ask about or discriminate against employees based on health issues. It’s almost like a father giving his teenage daughter a credit card and then never asking what she’s buying.

In regards to the drug and pharmaceutical industry, you are right, it’s pretty inflated as well but the healthcare industry has little to do with it. The pharmaceutical industry issues are out of the scope of this post.

I never said “trust Google blindly.” I simply said it’s inherently safer to store sensitive information digitally with encryption, distributed with intelligent backup, access control, and instant access for doctors. Enron is a completely different situation but I think it illustrates my point perfectly. The U.S. has private healthcare which means hospitals and doctors offices are companies. What is keeping the president of a hospital from corruption, just like with Enron? I think the George Clooney news story also lends itself to this idea: Removing human influence while making it easier for doctors to access it is the main premise here.

Doctors tell people where to go based on business relations. This is common practice. Most internists don’t have a whole list of cardiologists which they choose from specifically for each patient. They know one or two in the area who they are getting reciprocal recommendations from. Again, a symptom of privatized healthcare. Also, a patient can really only go to a healthcare provider if it is covered under their insurance. In reality, the insurance companies dictate where patients go.

I’m not really sure what you are trying to say with your last paragraph? I never said banks don’t have problems, I was merely pointing out that banks remove human influence by digitizing a lot of their systems. This was intended to wane hesitation and distrust of computers. The scene from Catch Me If You Can that I am thinking of is when the main character gets information and sensitive material from the bank tellers. These days computers check everything they do.

My main point: it’s safer to store sensitive information digitally encrypted at Google than it is to store it in clear text on paper at the hospital. Both are large private companies, but why would a data center have less vested interest in your data’s privacy than a hospital? Hospitals store your info on servers too, but probably a lot less technical expertise and security to protect it in that state.

And could you elaborate more on how the fact that someone that pays for your medical bills but cant see the exact itemized bills made the costs soar? I contribute it to the fact that medical companies spend billions of dollars and many years on R&D of a pill, then only get 20 years to sell it before patient expires and generics can make money. Not only that, but rule #1 of setting the price of a good is not how much it took to make it, but rather how much benefit the consumer will get. How much is good health worth to you?

Saying that Google knows everything about us and that we should just trust them because there are laws is bad. So far they have an excellent record of keeping things private, but just because it’s been their track record doesn’t mean that we should blindly trust them in the future. People had no reason to distrust Enron when they were pouring their life savings into their stocks…

As far as where a patient goes, I would assume most people would go to where their doctor tells them to go. If a person can’t trust their doctor for at least that much information, they need a new doctor.

With banks, there is still a ton of paperwork that is created and dealt with, they have the same problems as every other industry. Saying it’s all online is a myth (and maybe you didn’t mean to say bank’s had it made)

I was talking about this with my mom while going over my health care plans (which Google manages). She had been charged absurd amounts of money which her insurance mostly covered. I can only assume her insurance company doesn’t enjoy being billed tens of thousands for scans. I for one hope Google goes above and beyond its reach to challenge the way the system works now.