Reply to the length of copyright proposed by John Bergman....
Re: list of diagnoses and procedures <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/message/1698;_ylc=X3oDMTJyazUyajAzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE1BGdycElkAzE1MTIxMzE4BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNzI4MTk0MgRtc2dJZAMxNjk4BHNlYwNkbXNnBHNsawN2bXNnBHN0aW1lAzExNjU5MTg0MjU-> Posted by: "John H. bergman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> jhbergman2002 <http://profiles.yahoo.com/jhbergman2002> Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:17 pm (PST) At what point does some, or all of the copyrighted material become public domain? Patents have a life span of what? 10 years... copyrights also have a lifespan... The argument that we could 'wait out the copyright' won't work. The recording and movie industry have maneuvered copyright so that in the United States copyright is from date of publication + 70 (soon to be 100) years. It essentially keeps Micky Mouse from running out of copyright status. Many free projects have railed against this, including the Gutenberg project, with good data showing that much is lost when the non-moneymaker books and recordings stay copyrighted forever (or the copyright holder is lost to memory), or the rights are transferred to some large corporation in a buyout but that is lost in corporate transfers. Alas, we here in the US will have to work with this system, and we will continue to pay to get paid. The suggestion that we could use an alternate system and gain traction thereby won't fly here. Physicians already have an uphill fight with coding and reimbursement without trying to bottom-up impose a new system. Many of us here in the US remember the 70's when there were as many as 10 different, non overlapping coding systems, where some insurance companies (notably Blue Cross Blue Shield) had different coding systems for different payment levels and schemes. The inclusion of a single system for billing (and payment) has decreased the burden on physician offices to learn coding systems. Because many HMO/group insurers and others see membership in their organizations as 'optional', outliers trying to impose new codings on them would quickly be marginalized, and left out of the system (and the payments). There are physicians in the US who do not accept insurance. Medicare (CMS) saw that 'out' coming and mandated participation in the program with some pretty onerous manipulations to -opt out-. The fines are stiff for overbilling and overcharging Medicare recipients based on CMS formulas. Compliance is fairly high since accidental overbillings and misbillings are considered to be Fraud and Abuse and heavily punished. Use of the CPT codes and adherence to their internal structure (billing partitions) has been stringent as well. One can use CPT codes without license if one wishes. There are certain percentages of code which can be used without paying fees to the AMA. The impracticality of this is that CPT is updated. If you don't get the updates, you don't get paid. Redistribution cannot be done without a release from the AMA (again for certain portions of codebase those are waived). I hope this helps. I think even in the FOSS world there is general understanding that some components will be proprietary, owned by someone who wants to profit by his/her/corporate venture. -- -- Irving J. Buchbinder, DPM, DABPS Director, FreeMED Software Foundation, INC -=Technology advances. People stay the same=- Leigh Rubin [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
