Why Not Smart Cards Instead of EHRs?

As the gathering storm of health care reform threatens individual privacy in the form of electronic health records (EHRs) that can be accessed nationwide--and no doubt cleverly hacked into just as everything else is hacked into--a simple solution is to leave the data-keeping to individual patients.

Some countries, notably Taiwan in this comparative study, issue each person a smart card, onto which physicians and other health care providers encode the patient's medical history, medicines being taken, and other pertinent information. Patients carry the cards with them and can present them at any doctor's or specialist's office, and the smart card functions not only as a data center but also as a credit card to bill the government.

Cost for a family of four is just $650 annually and co-pays are low, just $7 for doctors, $1.80 for dentists, and a maximum of $6.50 for prescriptions.

Problem is, like our Medicare, the system is going broke.

Just proves the old adage that you can't have your cake and eat it too.