By Matthew Schofield, Kansas City Star editorial board columnist

Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt makes an interesting point in a press release today;

"You can drive up to any gas station in the country, and they can immediately figure more out about your car than a doctor knows about a patient."

Now, you might be thinking, "Wow, the Congressman goes to much better mechanics than I do," but he goes on to note:

"A straightforward way to lower health care costs is by increasing the use of health information technology. Health IT will help doctors and health care providers share information about a patient's history and prevent duplicative testing and other expensive, unnecessary medical mistakes."

It is amazing, in these days when computer search engines pop up ads to suit your shopping tastes, that medical information sharing is so lacking.

Of course, it goes beyond the fact that every time you go into a doctor's office, you have to fill out the same stupid questionnaire. That, however, is annoying.

Still, it's even more shocking the other direction. How long is it before medical providers actually start popping up such things as services provided and costs to online shoppers.

I mean, taking the Congressman's analogy and probably misusing it horribly, car mechanics give on-line estimates for their services these days. In the medical world, it's all very hush-hush.

Why should we care? Because we're getting gouged. We're shopping blind.

It's a nice reminder that health care reform is not all about "to public option or not to public option." It's about reforming our health care system

And that system has a lot of flaws that can and should be fixed.