UM, OUR HEROIC CAPITALIST DOCTORS STILL USE FAX MACHINES

I spotted this on Twitter:



This is on the Drudge homepage now:





The link goes to a story about a delay in small businesses' ability to enroll in Obamacare's insurance markets online. The story (also available here) says:
Gary Cohen, the Health and Human Services department official overseeing the rollout, said small business owners in states with federally-run markets will still be able to go online Oct. 1 and compare their health insurance options.

They can get the process going by filling out a form that will have to be transmitted separately by mail, fax, or as an email attachment. HHS will upload the information into the government's computer systems. The businesses will have to wait until sometime in November to finalize their applications.
Yeah, isn't that typical of the pathetic government -- expecting people in 2013 to use ... fax machines!

Well, I don't know how many doctors Matt Drudge has dealt with recently, but I've been dealing with a few, and, here in New York at least, a lot of doctors' offices still operate by fax. Remember, these aren't British doctors enslaved by evil socialism -- this is in the good old USA, where medicine is a capitalist enterprise, dammit. Some of these are literally Park Avenue doctors. You want test results from one doctor to give to another? You have to send the request by fax. The results -- often the handwritten results -- go by fax. Even doctors' offices that have discovered this new gizmo called e-mail (I've encountered one such office here in the city so far) have to keep a working fax machine for this purpose.

Look, there's some validity to the right's criticism of how government agencies run things. But private enterprise has just as many problems. Capitalism is only a magic cure for all ills in Ayn Rand novels.

****

And, of course, Obamacare offers incentives for medical offices to switch to electronic records -- and right-wingers don't like that, either.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...