The health care reform bill provides for the standardization of electronic administrative transactions. Under the bill, the standards for electronic administrative transactions shall

enable the real-time (or near real time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service and, to the extent possible, prior to service, including whether the individual is eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility, which may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card.

This is very cool. It means you’ll get a reliable and quick answer to “What’s covered, and how much will it cost me out-of-pocket?” [It doesn’t mean that THE GOVERNMENT WILL AHVE ACCESS TO YOUR CHEKING ACCOUNT. Really, it doesn’t.] This section has other cool provisions. In fact, the whole bill does. Check it out, unless you can’t because your time is completely sucked up on the phone with your health care insurer about what you owe.