>From a medical insurance and practitioners perspective HIPAA has really been a >hippo in the liability aspect of doing business. Unfortunately for reasons I >think Rachel adequately specified the true cost in the government legislation >has cost Americans in the short term more in real dollars than in budgetary >dollars in the past. While the average US Citizen has had a cumulative 30% >increase in premiums over the last two years the level of coverage has fallen >over those same years. This has not been accounted for rationally in any shape >or form in the medical profession or the insurance profession. My guess is >that the true cost of HIPAA has been passed along to patients and consumers. >This comes from the government mandating electronic media while not totally >mandating its form. Anyone who has worked with TPA's, Hospitals, Health Insurance Companies or physician billing systems knows there are ten thousand ways to communicate a 270/271/835/837. This is a HUGE Problem and a true shortcoming of HIPAA. Can you imagine filing your returns for taxes and being given estimated formats for submitting your taxes. HIPAA should have mandated the format for the forms if they were going to mandate electonic media. this would have had a lot of up front cost but would have settled costs more rapidly than a vague standard. just my2scents John
Earl Wertheimer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Rachel > Au contraire re the economic benefits not being a consideration for the > HIPAA legislation! The key portion of that HIPAA legislation is > administrative simplification with the stated legislative purpose: > > "Subtitle F-Administrative Simplification > SEC. 261. PURPOSE. > It is the purpose of this subtitle to improve the Medicare program under > title XVIII of the Social Security Act, the medicaid program under title XIX > of > such Act, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system, by > encouraging the development of a health information system through the > establishment of standards and requirements for the electronic transmission of > certain health information." > > In my book, efficiency relates to cost reductions and process improvements. > Doesn't that translate big time into economic benefits? No. Not if the government is behind it. ;-) I find it difficult to believe that a government mandated standard is actually able to achieve it's stated goals. Has HIPAA actually improved the Medicare program? http://www.overlawyered.com/archives/000430.html Private industry doesn't need laws to change their processes. They do what is more efficient, automatically. Earl Wertheimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.spe-edi.com . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups SponsorADVERTISEMENT document.write(''); --------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term' [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
