Monday, April 17, 2006

Maine's Medicaid Mistakes : A Balanced Perspective

This is in reference to an article in CIO titled "Maine's Medicaid Mistakes". The article continues to dig in the past without providing a guidance and assumming the reader to take their own prespective of the events. However it surprised me the overzealousness of the author to identify shortcomings of the State government to execute a project with a detailed chronological trail of events without acknowledging the good work being done to adapt to the precarious situation. The author identifies implementing unproven technology as one of the lessons learned, however mentions the use of J2EE systems later in the article as "the Ferrari of software code, which some of the largest corporations are now using to run their global operations".
We need to all recognize that the Medicaid market is dominated by a set of vendors who have exploited the states by repackaging 20 years old solution for 35-75 million dollars and yet have failed in some of those implementations. State of Maine acted as pioneers and did suffer as pioneers and early adopters typically do but at the same time need to be credited for giving the industry a new technology paradigm. Even the existing giants recognize this paradigm shift and in-fact one of these vendors is engaged with a State to implement a similar technology platform solution.