America's Health Care Reforms

Abstract

President Bill Clinton is currently proposing the most sweeping changes to American social policy since the New Deal by Roosevelt in the 1930s. Major concerns about escalating health care costs, a mushrooming health care bureaucracy and a growing proportion of the American population who can no longer afford adequate health care insurance coverage have motivated Clinton's plan for health care reform. Ideas about telemedicine, the electronic medical record and more comprehensive and advanced information systems are already being canvassed during the course of the debate. Australian clinicians and policy makers are following the American debate closely. So too, should health information managers. America watching should prove interesting, stimulating and professionally rewarding.