Posted on 02/10/2009 7:58:53 PM PST by St. Louis Conservative
The stimulus actually makes it harder for doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to use health IT, under the guise of "privacy." This is especially dishonest. Insurers already know the health condition of millions of Americans from claims information, which list diagnoses, prescriptions, procedures, etc. The government does too, because it pays so many medical bills through the entitlement programs.
In its pure form, the primary purpose of health IT is to organize all this data in a useful way, so we can get a better sense of health trends and outcomes. Large insurers like Kaiser Permanente and others are starting to do just that on their own, as well as creating the data-based tools that could give consumers a better value for their health dollars. The plug could get pulled from such efforts because the faux privacy provisions are so onerous.
The true political goal is cost control. For the Pete Stark Democrats whose ambition is Medicare for all -- no exceptions -- giving government exclusive control over electronic health information and reporting is a step toward "comparative effectiveness" research. That in turn will be used to impose price controls and deny some types of medical treatment and drugs. And because government is able to skew the whole health system through Medicare and Medicaid, comparative effectiveness could end up micromanaging the practice of medicine.
If three Republican Senators are going to help pass this stimulus, the least they can do is demand that this stalking horse for government-run health care is out. We need to debate this in the open, not slip it into legislation under false cover.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Someone on this site who knows the health care IT market better than I might chime in on this thought - Epic Systems in Madison, Wisconsin seems to be a huge player in the health provider software arena. Within Wisconsin they have taken some pretty bold political moves, and let’s just say they aren’t aiding the GOP. Methinks that Epic is just salivating at some of the plans that are being hatched by the Obama Administration. Any thoughts out there?
Clever. Cripple private IT efforts with “privacy” regulations. But of course the government will be exempt from any such regs, and can then move in, seize all health information for itself, and start murdering people systematically.
Who wants to bet that the number of those murdered will be higher in Red States?
After all the Red Staters are gone, the Red States can be turned into parks and wind farms, for the benefit of the majority Blue State i.e. City Dwellers. Mexico can grow the food and ship it over to the Blue Cities.
If so, that deceitful strategy has Rahm Emanuel's fingerprints all over it.
Exploiting a financial crisis & stoking the public's fears of impending "catastrophe" in order to justify ramming this thing through quickly before all its byzantinely surreptitious provisions can be fully scrutinized by the public sure would be a handy way for Obama, Pelosi & Reid to radically ramp up the government's socialization of health care delivery in this country, wouldn't it?
But hey, it's not like we weren't warned that the O-Team would try to unleash a trojan horse on us under the pretext of 'stimulating' economic recovery or anything. Rahm Emanuel actually copped to that very scam in advance! From the Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2008:
Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, speaking to a Wall Street Journal conclave of business leaders Tuesday, said the economic crisis facing the country is "an opportunity to do things you could not do before."
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Mr. Emanuel said.
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