Electronic medical records to become an issue in next presidential election?

[rwingo]

There's an interesting rumor over on Neil Versel's Healthcare IT blog regarding electronic medical records, Medicare running out of money, and the next presidential election:

Meantime, here's the best rumor of the week: Government number-crunchers are saying that Medicare Part A will be insolvent by 2012, six years earlier than the official current projection released just five weeks ago. I don't have enough confirmation to report it as fact and McClellan denied this, but it should make for interesting conversation and debate.

If true, Medicare insolvency suddenly becomes a front-burner issue in the 2008 campaign, since the next presidential term just happens to includes that 2012 date. The supposed insolvency also would happen before Bush administration's 2014 target date for interoperable electronic health records. Looking for the "burning platform" to accelerate adoption? I think we may have found one.

It will be interesting to see if this rumor pans out. While the healthcare IT industry has made some progress on interoperability, I think it's going to take real pressure from the government, maybe in the form of regulations, to really get things moving.