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Comment by jampekka | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I love paying it with worse health services though. My city has sunk almost a billion dollars into a dysfunctional Epic pile of MUMPS.

But I guess it's nice to see the healthcare software disgrace works well at least for some.

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I primarily work on clinical data, and from that side, the technology stack—MUMPS included—has its quirks but generally gets the job done. The real dysfunction in U.S. healthcare isn’t the software or the language itself, but the system it’s built to serve. The core issues lie in the incentives around revenue cycle management and the structure of the insurance industry. Blaming MUMPS is like blaming COBOL for bank fees—it’s the system, not just the syntax.

I'm not from US. The dollars were converted from euros. Our Epic/MUMPS installation is 100% tax funded single-payer with no insurance company involvement.

But MUMPS is indeed more a symptom of a rotten industry. E.g. the bidding process that led to this mess was very corrupt, from all sides.

> My city has sunk almost a billion dollars into a dysfunctional Epic pile of MUMPS.

I don’t know if the alternatives - e.g. Oracle Health/Cerner - are really that much better - and if Epic is as bad as you say, I suspect that says more about their corporate culture than choice of programming language

That was the story why Epic was chosen. It was made to be a dilemma between Epic and Cerner, by design.

In reality it's not a dilemma. In other cities and countries there are EHR systems from other vendors that work less bad and with lower cost.

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