From:               "Rachel Foerster" 
To:                 "'Edward Lipski'" , , 
Copies to:          "'Australian Senators'" <61bacgl1@oic.org>,
		    "'OIC Management Committee'" 
Subject:            RE: [ebxml-dev] ebXML core components derivation by restriction
Date sent:          Mon, 2 Aug 2004 11:21:47 -0500
Organization:       Rachel Foerster & Associates Ltd

Edward, just one small nit to pick with your comments below regarding the
U.S. Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

While you are correct in saying that the actual legislation itself does not
adopt or mandate the use of a particular technology, unfortunately, the
enabling regulation - The HIPAA Electronic Transaction Final Rule - does. 

It adopted implementation specifications based on the ASC X12 standards as well
as some based on the NCPDP standards. 

As a result, the use of the ASC X12 standards is now embedded in U.S. Federal 
Regulation for several financial transactions, including health care claims, 
health care claim payments and remittance advice, and several others.

The U.S. health care is now paying dearly to try to implement and deploy
just the health care claim transactions with dismal success and huge cost. 

Thus, what has and is happening in the U.S. is a prime example of the law of
unintended consequences when government, either through legislation or
regulation, mandates the use of a specific information technology on a major
sector of a country's economy in the blind hope that by doing so, the mere
use of a technology will optimize processes and remove cost. 

What a March of Folly!
 
Rachel Foerster

-----Original Message-----
From: Edward Lipski [mailto:ELipski@p21.com] 
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 9:36 AM
To: 'sggould@oic.org'; ebxml-dev@lists.ebxml.org
Cc: Australian Senators; OIC Management Committee
Subject: RE: [ebxml-dev] ebXML core components derivation by restriction
 
1. 	The legislation pointed to by your link above - HIPA (Health Insurance
	Portability and Accountability act) was passed in 1996 (under the Clinton
	Administration), and as the name suggests only legislates health and medical
	information. 

	From my personal meetings with US legislators I can assure you that they have 
	no concept of X12, EDIFACT, or XML, and their Staffers who do understand the 
	differences wouldn't want either legislated (they want it decided by the market). 

	HIPA was meant only to address US-domestic health privacy, and healthcare cost 
	concerns, and it is still under some controversy today.

	Also, there are so many highly paid lobbyist in Washington DC (Many openly
	employed by other Nations like China, and Australia) that I doubt that the
	companies who could make money from "Document re-formatting and re-routing"
	could possibly compete for the attention of the US Federal Government. 

	The US has many times in the past modified previous legislation that has
	been in conflict with recent Treaty obligations. 

	Moreover, the points made by Stephen Gould rely on a false premise. That
	either the Australian government (and all non-US governments by implication)
	is too incompetent to negotiate their own treaties, or that the US
	government is much smarter, and more clever than other governments. Do you
	really believe either to be true? 
 

Thank you.
Ed Lipski
Manager of Integration Technology
Prophet 21, Inc.