{"id":420668,"date":"2010-03-12T12:30:55","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T17:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=68182"},"modified":"2010-03-12T12:30:55","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T17:30:55","slug":"tom-daschle-former-senate-majority-leader-talks-healthcare-reform-but-not-health-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/420668","title":{"rendered":"Tom Daschle, Former Senate Majority Leader, Talks Healthcare Reform (but Not Health IT)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Health IT<\/a>, policy<\/a>, law<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\t\"DLA<\/a>
\n\t\tGregory T. Huang wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, I stopped by the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle to hear Tom Daschle, the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota, give the keynote talk at the 10th annual \u201cBreakfast with Champions\u201d fundraiser<\/a>, organized by the King County Bar Foundation. His main focus: healthcare reform.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t usually report on policy issues—or politicians—but I\u2019m making an exception here because healthcare reform is of pressing importance to a lot of people in the local innovation community. And a growing number of them are thinking specifically about the role of health IT in shaping the future of healthcare, especially given the Northwest\u2019s expertise in software. What\u2019s more, Daschle recently became a senior policy advisor to DLA Piper, a global law firm which has a strong presence in the Seattle area. He is also a member of the firm\u2019s governing global board.<\/p>\n

In his talk, Daschle, 62, helped frame the healthcare debate that\u2019s been going on in the other Washington for the past 14 months. It wasn’t really a nonpartisan treatment, but he did lay out some clear problems with the nation\u2019s current healthcare system—there are too many citizens who lack coverage and access, it’s too costly (\u201cStarbucks spends more on health than on coffee\u201d), and it lacks transparency (\u201cyou can\u2019t fix what you can\u2019t see\u201d).<\/p>\n

The goal of reform, as he sees it, is to put in place a new system that delivers high-quality healthcare to all citizens at a lower cost than today. Easier said than done, of course.<\/p>\n

What struck me, coming from my perspective of reporting on the tech community every day, was how little<\/em> health-IT came up in his talk. Sure, it\u2019s just part of the solution, but Daschle only mentioned electronic medical records once—when he said 20 percent of U.S. healthcare dollars are spent on paperwork, and yet only 13 percent of doctor\u2019s offices have an electronic health records system in place. What he didn\u2019t get into was how much these systems could potentially improve the quality of healthcare, not just the cost.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Daschle said he thinks healthcare reform as it\u2019s currently proposed has a 50-50 shot at passing. It\u2019s not an issue that will go away until it is successfully resolved, he said.<\/p>\n

In closing, he quoted Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela, trying to inspire Americans to do the right thing and to accomplish something that might seem impossible. \u201cIt\u2019s time to do our job,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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Health IT, policy, law Gregory T. Huang wrote: On Wednesday morning, I stopped by the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle to hear Tom Daschle, the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota, give the keynote talk at the 10th annual \u201cBreakfast with Champions\u201d fundraiser, organized by the King County Bar Foundation. His main focus: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}