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The professional medical establishment has been alarmed by the potential of this issue for a couple decades now, and even pushed for various laws and regulations against it through many national and state legislatures. However, studies exist showing such self-service at least in some cases is better for citizens than more traditional systems-- and total bans only give the issue to the virtual states/economies as another exclusive perk with which to entice new members.
Sufficient 'official' restrictions on this practice do get put into place which strengthen the virtual states at the long term expense of the old geophysical states, as well as the professional medical establishment itself (and many related old line health insurance agencies)
-- Society for Human Resource Management, January/February 1998, and the Futurist, Technology Development Predictions: 2001-2030
(found on/about 6-8-98)
-- A CYBER REVOLT IN HEALTH CARE Patients are finding new power through the Web By Heather Green in New York, with Linda Himelstein in San Mateo, 10-8-98, Businessweek, The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., and others -- "Med-Tech 'Decades Behind'" by Michael Stroud, 21.Jul.99, Wired Digital Inc. -- Predictions for the new millennium By LANCE GAY, October 25, 1999, Nando Media/Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.nandotimes.com |
The medical industry, under intense pressure from these developments as well as facing withering criticism of its own errors and inefficiencies over past decades, has actually been making moves to meet their new, more empowered patients half-way (even as they fought such empowerment in courts and legislatures).
Overhead costs in much of the sector have been slashed 50% since 1999.
-- Forecast: Internet will significantly change healthcare By Edward Winnick, Yahoo!/Reuters Health Headlines, December 1 1999 |
Medicine is now adopting investigative analysis procedures for mistakes in the industry more like those used by the aviation and nuclear power fields circa 1999. Such techniques focus less on blaming a particular person and more on determining how the system itself might be changed to prevent or reduce such problems in the future.
As of 1999, 44,000 to 98,000 Americans were dying due to mistakes in the health care industry.
-- Hazardous to ourselves by Bruce Hilton, Nando Media/Scripps Howard News Service, December 7, 1999, http://www.nandotimes.com |
Improvements in technology and medical knowledge, as well as changes on government regulations regarding health insurance, have also helped reduce costs in the sector.