Say Anything Blog

To make sure your doctor is treating you in a cost-efficient manner.

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.”

This baloney should go the way Daschle’s nomination did: Right down the crapper.

Outside of familial relationships, an individual’s relationship with his/her doctor is perhaps one of the most intimate and private relationships he or she has.  Already that relationship is made difficult by the fact that most of us have third-party health care payers (insurance companies, etc.) who want a say in how we’re treated.  But now we’re going to complicate things further by getting the federal government involved too?

Why does the government get a say in how I’m treated?  With insurance companies I get it.  By signing up for insurance we open the door to insurance companies having a say in how we’re treated.  It’s not a great situation, but that’s what has evolved.  But what business is it of the government’s how I’m treated?  Does anyone really think that the federal government - home of out of control spending and budget deficits - is going to bring efficiency to the health care industry?

And what of privacy?  Not only are we talking about every single one of our medical records being put in a federal computer system (what’s the worst that could happen), we’re also talking about federal bureaucrats being able to review our medical records.  For our own good.

This sort of unbelievably arrogant power grab is exactly the reason why Democrats are in such a hurry to fear-monger this way through Congress with a minimum of debate and scrutiny.  Because Americans don’t want this nonsense, and they know it.