The Baltimore Sun reports today that “The United States lags “at least a dozen years” behind other industrialized countries in adopting electronic medical records, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs” authored by Prof. Gerard F. Anderson, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and others. The report faults the government and insurance companies for failing to fund the initiative. I have not read the report, but I wonder whether the authors considered the fact that health insurers have spent millions of dollars over the past decade to come into compliance with the HIPAA administrative simplification standards at Congress’s direction?

Prof. Herbert presented an interesting price transparency report to Congress in March 2006. Here’s a link to a PDF copy.