HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The goal of this bill was to cut waste just like you, Barack Obama, spoke about when you mentioned the waste associated with 3 point data entry. HIPAA's privacy issue was about encryption methods for this digital data, not more paperwork to sign at an office we associate HIPAA with. The act itself was called the Administrative Simplification Act.

Read the exact words from HHS.gov
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/HIPAAGenInfo/
"The Administrative Simplification provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA, Title II) required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health plans, and employers. It also addressed the security and privacy of health data. As the industry adopts these standards for the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's health care system will improve the use of electronic data interchange. "

We can save hundred of billions (estimates are that it costs >$4 to process every insurance claim)

1. Make Insurance companies to comply with the code sets and update their existing infrastructure
2. Have current electronic claim software update hospital ledgers and automatically adjudicating funds in their system. Basically it means using better practice management software.
3. Build towards real-time transactions between health care providers and plans

This cuts so much waste associated with the processing of claims.