By Peter Loftus

The Wall Street Journal

October 6, 2009

The chief executive of International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) sees a huge business opportunity in making the U.S. health-care system more efficient.

(Sam) Palmisano sees IBM providing everything from electronic-health records technology to ultra-tiny personal devices that read DNA and cost less than $1,000. He likened those technologies to health-care equivalents of universal bar-codes in the retail industry, which made that industry more efficient.

But Palmisano acknowledged that single-payer, government health systems outside the U.S. make it easier to use technology for health-information sharing, because health information is more centralized.

“The advantage of a government payer or centralized system is they can begin to create incentives for change much more so than you can in a fragmented model,” he said.

He said the federal government could save itself $900 billion over 10 years in health-care spending by simply managing it better.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091006-708860.html

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

So IBM CEO Sam Palmisano says that single payer, government health systems have an advantage over fragmented systems (like ours in the U.S.) since they can create incentives for change. That seems counter to those who claim (falsely) that government systems suppress innovation.

He also states that the federal government could manage health care spending better (as Medicare and the VA have done).

Wow! Welcome aboard!