The 800-pound gorilla in the room around healthcare reform is not the red herring of the privacy issues related to the mass adoption of electronic health records but rather America's momentum in the direction of the cashless society--the framework necessary to get optimal fraud prevention and prosecution impact out of the monitoring of healthcare payments.

Europe's trajectory in this direction can be demonstrated by comments like those of Dave Birch, of the Digital Money Forum, who makes the assertion "The truth is that in the most cashless economies, most of the remaining cash isn't circulating anywhere: it is vanishing into the grey and black economies." Americans, of course, suspect that the opposite is also true. 


Where CMS's current fraud fighting efforts focus on the illegal delivery of durable medical equipment to dead persons, and while the media get maximum play out of the titillating topic of teenage sexting and legislatures line up for and against mobile devices and distracted driving, the more pressing issue, in the heart of our country and elsewhere, is that new technologies are being put to old uses.

Encouragingly, at least in some parts of the world, they are also being used to combat them.



Established in 1993 as a non-profit organization, RaFH has put Frontline SMS to use creating Helpline SMS Networks to "have a well-concerted and coherent strategy to deal with human trafficking, which is mired in complexity, [since] it is essential that all relevant agencies (both state and non-state) act as partners in effort, and are able to use their capacity to respond appropriately to all situations, like gears in proper alignment."