Last night I was reading Wired.com, a personal favorite web destination, and come upon one of the scariest things I'd ever imagined.
Wired has been asking readers what they think the world will look like in 10, 20, even 100 years, asking them to submit images of aspects of future life. The image that they have up this month is a very scary vision of the future of medical billing.
Electronic medical records and records have been a big item of discussion within the medical field, in government , and by privacy advocates. For this edition, Wired was looking at the future of medical billing, and the results were surprising.
It isn't that the records are electronic. Or that the patient was a ninety-year old mountain biker. Or that they are on a tablet/iPad type device. Even the additional bills are disconcerting (recreational injury tax?), but the really worrying thing is the service provider: Walmart Surgical Clinic.
In the future, are people going to be willing to hand over their medical coverage to Walmart? The prevention of "Bottom Basement Discount Medical Care" is what we just had a huge political battle over during the Health Care Reform. I know, Walmart hasn't proposed anything like this and it is some individual's idea of what something might hypothetically look like, but that this could even be imaged in frightening.
Posted by Will - June 30, 2010 3:07 PM
Deleted again! Apparently, this time was for noting that Will wrote a blog about what someone IMAGINED Walmart might do!
Posted by Ike - July 6, 2010 7:20 PM