Google Health https://www.google.com/health is online after a year and a half since Adam Bosworth announced a health product from Google. Google Health proposes to:

• Organize your health information all in one place
• Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
• Keep your doctors up to date about your health
• Be more informed about important health issues
• According to the Google Health FAQ, “You can store records of current and past medications, allergies, procedures, immunizations, conditions, and test results. You can enter any of this information on your own, or you can import your medical records from a list of Google Health integrated partners, such as hospitals or neighborhood pharmacies.”

Google Health has been designed as a PHR (Personal Health Record), but it is also a bit of a different model. “We believe it’s not enough to offer a place where you can store, manage, and share your health information. You need to act on your health information to better manage your health needs on a daily basis. This is why we provide a directory of online health services to you. You must elect to sign up with a service and decide what level of personal data you want to share in exchange for the customized services those companies offer”, is mentioned on Google Health pages.

This article comes from All Business.com and is written by Keith Girard.

“Who should get health insurance, how should they get it, and who pays? Those three questions are at the forefront of the current controversy over health care and will provide the framework for the great debate that will begin once the presidential primaries end and the general election begins.

Small business owners, of course, have a huge stake in the outcome of both the election and the debate. Of the 47 million people currently without health insurance, the overwhelming majority either own or are employed by a small business. That means health care should be one of the key decision points for choosing the next president. So where do the presidential candidates stand and what does the public think?” Click here to read the rest of this article which includes the positions of the Presidential candidates.

This post comes from the L.A. Times. U.S. manufacturers who provide health insurance spend an average of $2.38 per worker per hour on healthcare — more than twice as much as their foreign competitors, an analysis released Tuesday found.

The study provides support for the now-familiar lament of employers — that rising healthcare costs are eating into the corporate bottom line.

American automakers say employee health coverage adds $1,500 to the price of each car, and many U.S. manufacturers have blamed rising healthcare costs for decisions to drop health benefits for workers or shift jobs overseas.

But many economists have pooh-poohed the idea that U.S. businesses are hurt by their comparatively high healthcare costs. Instead, they have suggested that companies would pass those costs onto workers by lowering wages or onto consumers by raising prices. Click here to read the rest of this article.