ALERT: Stealth Health Care Socialization In The Stimulus Bill–UPDATED
February 9, 2009 / 4:12 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierAm I banging a drum? Yes. Why? Because this bill has enormous long-term implications for you, your business, your family, your privacy, your health care and your wallet. Is there anything more intimate and important than your health care decisions? They affect every aspect of your life. From before you are born until after you’re long dead (family stuck with your bills), health care policy is one of the most significant ways your life is touched by the government.
Bloomberg’s Betsy McCaughey brings attention to some of the more nefarious provisions:
The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.
But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.
New Penalties
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)
What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
I keep hitting this topic (more here and here) because this legislation will affect you and your family. The end results of this legislation will not be freedom, choice and individualized care. The end result will be that a bureaucrat will be deciding who should and should not receiver care, how and when they should receive care and what care the person should receive.
Please reread that last sentence again. There will not be one aspect of your health care that won’t be controlled by the government.
And remember this: Rich people will ALWAYS have choice because they’ll have the money to pay for whatever care they want. It will be the poor and middle class, yet again, who get screwed. They will be stuck with the basic minimum health care. They will be told no and turned away and they will not have the means to seek alternatives.
Doctors, too, will suffer. Already, doctors function under the threat of violating arcane rules and regulations with HIPAA. The unintended consequences are legion and patients enjoy less privacy protection. Don’t get me started on Medicaid and Medicare. The paperwork, rules and regulations and crummy reimbursement make it of negligible benefit to provide services. That is yet another way patients are worked over–the best and brightest docs don’t accept Medicaid and Medicare. They don’t have to. They can spend their time and energy on something other than paperwork.
This Bill is a disaster for so many reasons, but the worst, are the long-term ramifications for socializing medicine in America. And people a couple years down the road are going to wonder how all this happened. Well, Citizens, this is what happens when you don’t slow down and read the fine print. There are over 700 pages of this horrendous bill. Most likely you haven’t read one of them. More likely still, neither has your Congressman.
UPDATED:
Salty Pundit notes the euphemism for euthanasia:
What?! Do we live in a free country or not? And what Tom Daschle said in his book is even more outrageous:
The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
