The federal government wants the healthcare industry to operate more efficiently. Please suppress any laughter and innate skepticism. Yes, it’s akin to Hugh Hefner taking a vow of celibacy based on religious convictions.

But the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights conceivably could pick up the torch and run with it, using all the influence and power of Capitol Hill and marshaling support from the White House – specifically, CMS – to make it happen in time for the 2012 presidential election.

Start by shelving, tabling, or better yet, tossing out the GPO witch hunt as a red herring strategy and tactic. Realistically, the ongoing bureaucratic fishing expedition will result in wasteful and inefficient spending, costing taxpayers what these misguided politicians have deluded themselves into thinking they can rescue from/squeeze out of the GPO industry.

Honestly, few outside roughly half the hospital industry’s C-suite and the supply chain management segment of the healthcare industry care about GPOs, let alone know and understand what they do and how they contribute to costs and quality from a consumer perspective. To date, no media outlet really has connected the dots between GPO operations, what kind of healthcare you get as a consumer and how much of the bill you have to pay for. So cue the chirping crickets already.

Instead, the Subcommittee should redirect its efforts, concentrating and focusing them in one area: Forcing healthcare providers, suppliers and payers to adopt and implement supply data standards. Not emphasizing, encouraging or even recommending. Legislating. Mandating.

Unrealistic, you scoff? If self-aggrandized healthcare reform crusader Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) can suggest a "modest" tax on healthcare suppliers as a funding mechanism for unwieldy healthcare reform programs then all bets are off. His reality TV-oriented logic (fodder for narcissistic publicity hounds eagerly fed by a duplicitous viewing and voting public) could just as well have emerged from an alternate timeline or parallel universe (the latest rage to "explain" time travel in current science fiction movies, television programs and "rebooted" multimedia franchises).

The plan is simple enough for even a federal senator to grasp and promotes a transparency that will render the GPO debate inert.

1. Providers, suppliers and payers have until January 2012 to select, adopt and begin implementing data standards on every product acquired – from dry-erase marker to drug-eluting stents.

2. Until then, providers and suppliers have to figure out their own way of incorporating this new wrinkle into their operations. Meanwhile, software companies have to develop, program and make available all of the necessary fields and computing nuances to enable the successful transmission of standardized data, regardless of standard chosen, technology used or product identified.

3. Payers have to incorporate this standardized data into their reimbursement decisions and records, linking this information to their own standardized data.

4. Those who comply earn a 10 percent rebate for three years – to 2015. For providers, this represents 10 percent of its annual purchasing dollar volume; for suppliers, 10 percent of annual sales dollar volume; for payers, 10 percent of net revenue.

5. Those who fail to comply earn a 25 percent tax on the same for the first year, 50 percent the second year and 75 percent the third year. Such unreasonable but truly motivational "incentives" will speed the necessary transition to standards by offsetting the tax breaks of the compliant, paying for tracking and enforcement and urging the reluctant to merge with the efficient or cease operations. A more efficient system should more than offset any potential harm that would ordinarily befall the industry with fewer players.

Finally, this also satisfies President Obama’s desire and strategy to "spend our way out of a recession." Call it "e-bucks for efficiency" as awareness and education must fade to decision and action. Or those long lines we witnessed for the H1N1 vaccine will lose their shock value.