Health-care reform is a hot-button issue for which the solutions are many and the compromisesdifficult to achieve. There is, however, one reform that both sides seem to think should be implemented: electronic health records.

Will it ultimately save money? I'm not really sure, but it's pretty clear a lot of companies are going to make a buck in the process of trying.

Money, and then more money
Setting up an electronic medical records system isn't cheap, especially compared with the cost of the pen and paper that doctors can use as an alternative. To try to spur things along, the stimulus bill last winter includedmoney to help doctors and hospitals set up their systems.

In the new wave of health-care reform, additional incentives are being bandied about in the bills before Congress to increase the use of electronic health records. For instance, Medicare Advantage providers such as Humana (NYSE: HUM) would be given bonus payments for using electronic records, and nursing homes might also see some money thrown their way.

All this financial encouragement is great news for the companies that make systems to keep track of electronic medical records.

Everyone's in on the act
In addition to the usual suspects of Quality Systems , Allscripts-Misys Health care Solutions , Cerner , and athenahealth , which were setting up doctors and hospitals with electronic health record systems before the government started waving around $1,000 bills, there's a growing list of traditional IT companies getting in on the act.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) was already a player, mostly in the larger hospital market, and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) has jumped inwith a full suite of software and hardware for the doctor. It'll also increase its presence in the space once it closes its acquisitionof Perot Systems , as will Xerox (NYSE: XRX) with its marriageto Affiliated Computer Services .

To make the sales easier for small doctors' offices, Dell and eClinicalWorks have teamed up with Wal-Mart 's (NYSE: WMT) Sam's Club to sell their packages. I doubt that any doctors will make an impulse purchase of an electronic health-record suite alongside their 20-pound bags of pretzels, but giving company representatives an easy place to close the sale after initially introducing the products to the doctor is a nice touch.

Hoping for a free lunch
A few companies could benefit from this move to electronic medical records, and they might even have a positive effect on lowering the cost of health care. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and others have websites to keep your medical records all in one place.

The only problem is, who the heck is going to type in all that information from his or her doctor?

If, on the other hand, the doctor was willing to do the work getting it into electronic form, then it's just a matter of exporting the information from the doctor's system into these websites. Continued...