Why open standards are good for your health

Are we going to single payer anyway?

From an IT perspective this may actually be a benefit. If more people are moving toward plans funded by the federal government, then the government’s IT procurement decisions should be definitive in terms of standards and protocols.

If the VA, the military, Medicare and Medicaid build and re-build their IT infrastructure based on the same open standards, in other words, those become the standards the private insurance market will follow.

Assuming, of course, that the U.S. government builds to a single standard.