I had a conversation with a coworker who used to build software for the criminal justice system. To make a long story short, it turned out to be impossible to make a good software system for the criminal justice system. Between the courts, police departments, and government, nobody was willing to give up any data, fearing they would lose their own value in the system.<p>I fear that healthcare will suffer the same fate. Between insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, patients, governments, and every middleman inbetween, nobody is going to want a system that makes one of them irrelevant.