Stealth Care (IBD Exclusive Series: Inside The Stimulus )

IBD Editorials ^ | March 4, 2009

[Kaslin]

Spending: The stimulus provides for the creation of a federal health care bureaucracy not unlike Hillarycare. Decisions that should be made by doctors and patients will belong to bureaucrats deciding cost-effectiveness.

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The stimulus bill commits $19 billion to accelerate adoption of Health Information Technology (HIT) systems by doctors and hospitals. It involves the creation of electronic medical records to be stored in a central database. This is said to be for reducing treatment errors and increasing efficiency in the delivery of medical care.

It also authorizes the creation of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology — and the appointment of a 15-member board of officials from federal agencies and others — charged with developing this nationwide health information database

It further creates an entity called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which will decide which treatments you should get, whether you should get them, and whether they should even be available. It is modeled after a British board which helps run the notoriously inefficient and bureaucratic National Health Service.

These agencies will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is caring for you in a way the federal government deems appropriate and cost-effective. Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost-effectiveness standard that would lead to health care rationing. It would determine what medical care should be provided and who should get it.

[SunTzuWu]

Bump for later reading.

[newheart]

For the record ONCHIT is at least 5 years old. It is not new and it is not sinister. The council on effectiveness is new and it is definitely something to worry about.

[txnativegop]

Rationed care here we come.

[Fast Moving Angel]

Decisions that should be made by doctors and patients will belong to bureaucrats deciding cost-effectiveness.

Too late ... it's already happened. I'm caught in Blue Cross hell right now with multiple appeals of multiple denials of benefits because they think they can countermand a surgeon's orders.

[dervish]

Go to your state Insurance Department for help.