Say Anything Blog

Serious implications.

Previously I posted about a provision in the stimulus that would create a new government bureaucracy to oversea and monitor a national database of our health records.  It’s troubling enough that a) our health records would all be in one place and accessible by the government and b) that the government is apparently going to be monitoring them to make sure we get government-approved health care, but what’s troubling even on top of that is the fact that the government will have access to any psychiatric evaluations you’ve had done.

Remember during anti-gun hysteria following the Virginia Tech shooting when Congress passed a bill that would deny gun ownership to anyone having a mental illness?  That law ultimately passed (it was called the NICS Improvement Act).  I had opposed it then with this reasoning:

Mental illness is something that is diagnosed medically.  Meaning that a doctor does it, and your diagnosis is covered by doctor-patient confidentiality.  So how are gun sellers going to know who does and does not have a mental condition that disqualifies them from purchasing a firearm?  Are we going to start requiring that psychiatrists report these kind of illnesses to the feds who will keep it all in a big database?  That sounds like a gross invasion of our privacy, not to mention something that would require a huge new federal bureaucracy costing us millions or billions of tax dollars.

Banning people with criminal records from buying guns is one thing as criminal records are public records, but banning gun sales to people with certain medical conditions is a whole new ball of wax.

And who gets to decide what sort of mental disorder does and does not disqualify one from buying firearms?  If I get fired from my job, go to see my shrink and get some Prozac to help me with my depression is someone from the ATF going to show up to take away my weapons?

With the “stimulus” spending spree’s provisions’ opening up of our medical records to the government, that’s exactly what could happen.

But of even greater concern to gun owners is the fact that a government-coordinated database (which government can freely access) will now contain all records of government-provided and private psychiatric treatment -– including, in particular, the drugs which were prescribed.

Remember last year’s “NICS Improvement Act” otherwise known as the Veterans Disarmament Act? This law codified ATF’s attempts to make you a prohibited person on the basis of a government psychiatrist’s finding that you are a “danger” –- without a finding by any court. Well, roughly 150,000 battle-scarred veterans have already been unfairly stripped of their gun rights by the government.

But people who, as kids, were diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder… or seniors with Alzheimer’s… or police with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder… or people who are now theoretically covered by the new law… these people have, generally, not suffered the consequences of its sanctions YET. And the chief reason is that their records are not easily available to the government in a central, easily retrievable, computerized form.

The bailout bill would change all of that. It would push increasingly hard to force your private psychiatrist or government-sanctioned psychiatrist to turn over your psychiatric records to a massive database. This would be mandated immediately if your doctor does business with the government.

This sort of nonsense, this government power-grab, is exactly why Barack Obama and his fellow liberals want to pass the “stimulus” as quickly as possible with as little debate and scrutiny from the public as possible.