Tuesday, February 10, 2009

America's New Health Dictatorship

Little known to virtually every American until this article was posted yesterday, is the inclusion of a National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the Stimulus Package. Sounds innocent enough, right? Obama has been talking about converting medical records to electronic records for some time in an effort to streamline medical care. The real purpose of this new healthcare nominee, however, is far more sinister, and was purposely slipped into the Stimulus Bill without fanfare, without discussion, and without the knowledge of the American people. And it, perhaps more than anything in that bill, will effect the lives of every American more than any of us can imagine. Seniors, in particular, are in the cross hairs of this brave new Obama health care world.

I have a special interest in this topic as I worked in biotechnology for 18 years, and my husband is a physician. I also have relatives and friends in Canada and England who live under the universal healthcare umbrella. The systems are wholly designed on cost-effectiveness models of providing health to a wide variety of individuals, under a strict bureaucracy which dictates which medicines and technologies are worth providing to specific groups, based on certain criteria, such as age. Rationing is inherent to the system; otherwise it is simply too expensive to provide. This will be more problematic in a country of 300 million people of various races and ethnic backgrounds. Every day, scientists find genetic differences in the way that individuals respond to medicine. Under this new regime, we will all be treated as the same based on whatever group in which the government decides to place us. If a particular cancer drug may work for you, but it is experimental, or too expensive, too bad. You'll get the drug the government says you'll get, regardless of whether it will actually work to cure you. You think HMO's are tough to deal with; try changing the government's mind about the effectiveness of the newest drug before your child dies of a cancer that it may have cured.



Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey

Commentary by Betsy McCaughey


Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

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.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

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.

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Betsy McCaughey at Betsymross@aol.com

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Plea to Common-Sense Americans:
BO is demanding that we act quickly, not prudently. What kind of leader is that? That is a leader that is not qualified, (i.e. does not have the experience to protect Americans). Please call your legislators (especially in ME & PA) to demand that this bill be changed or vote NO.
BO says that we must pass this bill immediately. If we do folks, we all will regret it… mark my words.

Mad Mom said...

Between the erosion of our national security, the Democrat payback bacon laden in the Stimulus package, this sinister salvo into universal health care, and the census power grab by Obama, the very core of our country has been put at risk in just three weeks. What will they do in a year? He must be stopped.

libhom said...

HMOs and insurance companies already do ration healthcare. They do it much more ruthlessly than the government does.

We would have universal healthcare and spend less on healthcare if we had single payer healthcare. Why? Inefficiencies in HMO and insurance company systems are so much greater than government systems.

People in Canada and Europe get much more healthcare for much less money. We should learn from them.

Mad Mom said...

You are seriously misinformed libhom. Both my husband and I have had significant experience dealing with reimbursement and formularies and the government is far more difficult to deal with. And Medicare is about to go bankrupt. England and Canada have miniscule populations as compared to the US and rationing still goes on. I worked for an international companies and saw first hand how they handled the accessibility of new biotechnology drugs; rationing again. Stop listening to the liberal spin on this; we will get far less care, with more inconvenience, at far greater cost to cover the 42 million uninsured and illegals. That does not even address the shortage of PCP's that already exists in the system.

Anonymous said...

Here in America, if your child has an ear ache you can take him to the pediatrician or to an urgent care facility of your choice. The child will be seen quickly, diagnosed, and the necessary treatment prescribed.

My understanding of European healthcare...your child may have to wait several days before being seen by the required doctor.

undertaker said...

This article should be printed in all the medical periodicals. I have sent it to two local doctors and suggested they print sufficient quantities to mail with bills and give to patients to read as they wait in the waiting room. Simply put, it needs dissemination to as many people as possible.