You may remember, in February of this year, the Obama Administration announced $975 million in grants to help states, doctors and hospitals move from paper to computerized record-keeping. That is almost a billion dollars.

That’s ok though because, as AP pointed out then via ABC…

Studies show electronic medical records help reduce medical errors and improve the quality of patient care. The grant money comes from the economic stimulus passed by Congress last year and is part of a push to get health care providers to adopt electronic record-keeping.

The White House says the awards will help make electronic record-keeping technologies available to more than 100,000 hospitals and primary care physicians by the year 2014 while helping train thousands of people for careers in health care and information technology.

Studies show? Well, let’s look into the future via my time machine*, across the pond to the UK and the NHS.

Electronic patient care records will require an “enormous effort” and a “high cost” to fulfil their potential, a study warns.

Enormous effort and high cost, I would say so. This is a £12bn upgrade to the NHS IT systems alone and it is threatening to go over its £200m annual budget. All of this to push a system that nobody apparently wants.

To date, just 1.2m patients have had their records uploaded although 30m have received letters informing them about the system.

And that’s in a total target pool of 50 million, how many are we shooting for?

Government run health care, in all it’s forms, is the political equivalent of a boat. It’s pretty to look at, it’s fun to say you have; but the reality is – it will drain every last dollar from your pocket.

And it’s not just me saying this, studies show…

Lead author Professor Trisha Greenhalgh said: “This research shows that the significant benefits anticipated for these programmes have, by and large, yet to be realised.”

… not all that glitters is gold, not all things anticipated come to pass. Especially when those things are anticipated by elites so far removed from reality that they have begun believing their own bull.

Who wants to lay a wager that 2014 comes and passes without significant results from that $975 million in grants? And by significant, I mean at least 40% participation. How about on how much they will ask for to be able to complete it by, say, 2020?

Aaron B. Gardner

* I truly believe that the NHS and all it’s horrors await at the end of the path Obama has put us upon.

Crossposted at Conservative Punditry