Posted on 02/12/2009 12:38:54 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported on a stealth provision in Porkulus that would set the stage for federal diktats in patient care. The bill created a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, a Tom Daschle pet project that would study the effectiveness of patient treatments and set federal rules on which treatments would be allowed by health-care providers throughout the US. As Betsy McCaughey reported, Daschle’s vision was to eliminate costly treatments and slow progress on medicine:
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.
When confronted by this provision by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, cancer survivor Arlen Spector professed surprise at hearing about the inclusion of such a program. He then promised to vote against any bill that included such a provision:
Well, it looks as though it’s time to call Specter’s bluff. HA reader Dr. Eric Novack, who once led an effort in Arizona to put , has reviewed the new version of Porkulus — and the same sections remain. In fact, as Eric notes, it occupies almost a third of the entire bill:
Of the 1434 pages, pages 806-1251are dedicated to the expansion of the federal health care bureaucracy. (That is, not including the COBRA, Medicaid, etc. expansion that begins on page 1278.)
page 826 line 8 establishes: There is hereby established a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research
fyi
Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey
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the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology will be watching and keeping track....
The dark humor of this, the dark justice of it all, is that the very people who advocated guiltless killing of the young will eventually be subject to guilt free euthanasia of the old.
Don’t forget those who are ‘special needs’ among many other things. What about those who are wheelchair bound? Asthmatic? On, and on, and on.
Call every one of the corrupt POS in the Congress and tell everyone you know. Ask them to call as well. The rage is on simmer and will erupt eventually. Along with regulating your medical, they will be deciding who lives and who dies. Non-Liberals will be in a category all to themselves. History is indeed repeating itself.
Final Stimulus Bill Creates Government Database that Will Hold Every American’s Personal Medical...
How sad for them. They don’t care about life.
This nonsense infuriates me as a healthcare worker and as someone who deeply cares for the well-being of my patients. The federal government doesn’t know better than I how to treat an illness, and I’ll be d@#$ed if I sit by and let these rat finks tell me how to run my practice.
My two lunkhead Senators wrote a letter to a major paper in our state (DE) that this was not the case.
Tools.
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