They are doing this. Sort of. Electronic Medical Records are being developed all over the place. The thing is, this being private industry, just about everybody is doing it their own way. There is no standard. There are existing standards for data interchange, but there are no standards for electronic records.

If Obama's plan pans out, all these companies that have spent all this money on all these different systems are going to have to spend a bunch more money switching to the standard. They're get Gov't assistance, of course, but they still need to train their people on the new stuff so soon after they were trained on the proprietary systems.

Yeah, and the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.

True enough, but the Almighty Invisible Hand of the Free Market isn't taking care of this, either.

Thank you for your thoughtful, and non-insulting reply. I agree that the blame mostly lies with Bush, but McCain's campaign clearly illustrated to me that the neocons who brought us Bush were still in charge of the Republican party. Until those idiots are no longer running that party, I will not vote for them. That sucks for the good Republicans, but they've got a lot of cleaning up to do. I wish them well.

I have hope that McCain will leave that crowd behind and do some good for what remains of his political career. His concession speech was nothing short of beautiful. His audience's reaction was atrocious, but I don't fault McCain for that.

I wish I could mod that up, because that's exactly why I voted the way I did this election. I voted D straight down the list for the first time ever. No mix and match, no attempt at balance. Straight Democrat. I feel a little dirty, but it needed to be done, and for the first time since I've been able to vote, I actually have hope that maybe this time it will be different. I was well on my way to becoming disillusioned and apathetic, but this time I care, and I'm hopeful.