\u00a0 \u00a0More on this topic in our next blog.<\/em><\/p>\nTwo things we know for sure about HRC: \u00a0she is a huge supporter of Health Information Technology (HIT) and she has been a huge advocate for not only universal care, but also an extensible single payer model. \u00a0As we noted before, she and former Speaker of the House of Representatives actually wrote about how we had to move toward and invest in electronic health records (EHR) and in general, into HIT.<\/p>\n
In 1993, the opposition for what was called \u201cHillaryCare\u201d was extensive from the right, the center, and the left. \u00a0The right because they seemed to see this as a government grab of an industry that was then over 10% of the entire GPD of the U.S; the center because it was actually avoiding the managed care component that proved to be a major trend in both employer- and government-based (Medicare and Medicaid) managed care (Medicare Advantage) although new at that time in the early 90s. \u00a0The left because later it became expanded to include prescriptions by President George W. Bush, in what became to be known as Medicare Advantage Part D (MAPD). \u00a0Since then, many states have also partially or completely converted Medicaid to a state-wide managed care program, including our home state of Florida.<\/p>\n
By 1995, our professional history had adapted totally to the managed care solution and with that, came the realization that the only real way to affect quality of care from the administrator level was to use technology to make communication faster, better and actionable. \u00a0This realization has lead our life in healthcare ever since. \u00a0In 1996, we innovated new ways to gather medical data, integrate it, and move it. \u00a0Still, this was at the infancy of the commercial internet. \u00a0I recall that my business cards actually listed our company web page as \u201cInternet: http:\/\/www.metcare.com\u201d at the time. \u00a0If you saw that today, you would wonder why, however in 1996, few people used the internet for commerce.<\/p>\n
Healthcare technology has come from the dark ages into the light in that time period, and we believe that the journey has only just begun.<\/p>\n
What we know now is that since 1993, healthcare has become a much larger part of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). What we know today is that technology is starting to be applied to make it better. \u00a0We also know that there is huge tension in the system from not only the normal players such as insurance companies, employers, hospitals, doctors and pharmaceuticals, but also consumerism and it has fully emerged; the latter was not really an issue in 1993.<\/p>\n
ObamaCare has provided more coverage (summary in a future blog), and I have witnessed lives saved financially for many Americans. \u00a0However, since then, costs have escalated and many people remain uninsured, underinsured, and upset. \u00a0National and state budgets are bleeding (and it WILL get worse) from escalating healthcare cost (over 5% in 2015), and as we have just noted in our last four blogs, we are heading for healthcare cost consuming 30% of the U.S. GDP.<\/p>\n
More details on the U.S. Elections and \u201cClinton v. Trump 2016\u201d to come.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We have a long and professional history with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC), as an impacted party. \u00a0In what was still our freshman period in healthcare, we have been practically obsessed with her vision of healthcare since 1993. We got into healthcare in 1991, in what can only be described as a cosmic accident, as an angel investor in a medical equipment company. \u00a0Frustrated with the construction and development business, we decided that maybe healthcare was a better option. \u00a0After serving as an unpaid internship in the company we invested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Medical-Globe.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}