Stimulus package hiding health bill
What do massive changes in the health care bureaucracy have to do with economic stimulus? A lot more than the government wants you to know.
Former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, last week withdrew his bid for that post after disclosures about his federal income tax issues.
Nonethless, Daschle's fingerprints are all over President Obama's economic stimulus bill. Daschle's generous contribution to the bill has nothing to do with economic stimulus and a whole lot to do with what would appear to be a deliberate plan for a government takeover of the country's health care system.
The proposed legislation will affect the health care of every individual in this country, allow the federal bureaucracy access to everyone's medical records, establish at least two large new bureaucracies to oversee doctors' treatment decisions and effectively ration the health care that is provided, particularly to the elderly.
Heard anything about it? Probably not, and that's by design.
The Obama administration has rammed through Congress this humongous piece of legislation, one supposedly devoted to economic stimulus, without legislative hearings, without time for debate and discussion and under Obama's surprisingly strident demand to pass it immediately or risk what he calls a "catastrophe."
Here are some of the medical provisions, which are taken straight from a 2007 Daschle book:
All medical records will be electronic, an idea that lends itself to increased efficiency. But the records will be forwarded to the newly created National Coordinator of Health Care Information to monitor doctors' decisions, ostensibly to ensure uniformity of treatment and enhance cost effectiveness.
Does anyone remember the embittered comments of patients who objected to insurance companies overseeing and sometimes vetoing doctors' decisions about treatment? This is the same thing, except a government bureaucrat will do it. In his book, Daschle said the goal is to force doctors to give up their autonomy, but that also will mean doctors will be pressured not to treat patients as individuals but as just another body on a production line.
By the way, doctors perceived as not submitting to government dictates will be subject to undisclosed penalties.
The bill also establishes the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. According to health care delivery expert Betsy McCaughey, Daschle advocates creation of the body not to advance, but to slow, development and use of new medicines and technologies deemed to drive costs up.
McCaughey said Daschle's goal is to limit costs by limiting care, particularly to the elderly.
Under current law, Medicare pays for treatment deemed safe and effective. Under the proposed change, the council will apply a cost-effectiveness standard. A similar panel in Britain used a formula that divided the cost of a proposed treatment by the life expectancy of a patient.
Taking that approach, the British board denied elderly patients treatment for macular degeneration until they went blind in one eye. Only then could they get treatment for the remaining eye. The policy lasted for three years before public outrage forced a change.
There is no doubt that the rising costs of health care have created a huge societal problem that may require tough decisions with unpalatable results. But if that's inevitable, shouldn't there be some public discussion and debate about specific solutions? What the stimulus bill presents instead are dramatic, wholesale changes to the health care system without any real debate or even the vast majority of the public knowing anything about it – all under the masquerade of economic stimulus.
Betsy McCaughey, a paid shill by drug and health related companies, is back again, with an editorial in Bloomberg, where she she warns that provisions of the stimulus bill "are dangerous to your health." In particular, she tells of "one new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, [which] will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."
Sigh. The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology is not a new bureaucracy created in the stimulus. Bush signed it into office in 2004. it has a web site, a director, and, presumably, a phone line, which could have been used by McCaughey or Bloomberg to check the next fact: That it will "monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective."
You'll be shocked to learn that, no, it doesn't do this, either. McCaughey is darkly conflating two things: One is medical health records. That's what the NCHIT oversees. It's a coordinating authority that helps "guide the nationwide implementation of interoperable health information technology in both the public and private health care sectors, to the extent permitted by law; and provides comments and advice at the request of OMB regarding specific Federal health information technology programs." In other words, it's helping the private sector move your medical records from manila envelopes to computers, and trying to help the private sector settle on a single standard so the records can be shared among different providers. That way, if you have an emergency and are taken by ambulance to the hospital, your primary care doctors can e-mail them your information immediately so you don't die from a drug allergy they didn't know about. This is all about a decade away from happening, incidentally.
Meanwhile, the thing McCaughey is actually talking about, or trying to talk about, or trying to lie about, is comparative effectiveness review. The stimulus bill funds increased research into the value of different treatments. This sort of research goes on every day, all the time. Foundations fund it, as do universities and even pharmaceutical companies. Not only isn't it sinister, it's not even particularly interesting.
As for McCaughey's broader claim, nothing in the bill, nor in the structure of the federal government, gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the capacity, funding, authority, or mandate to monitor the medical profession's treatment decisions and decide if they're appropriate. There may come a day when that data is used to make coverage decisions, but that day is not today, and nothing in the stimulus brings it any closer. Indeed, doing so would be a question not of data collection but of payment reform (you'd have to change payment rates to reflect the research). There is nothing on that in the bill. McCaughey is simply lying, much as she did in 1990s. And, like in the 1990s, her lies are convenient, and they're being amplified by opportunistic rightwing outlets. But this isn't the 90s. And the thing about nostalgia tours is they never last very long, and they're never as effective as the original.
The above was written originally by Ezria Klien! AAnd submitted with his knowledge.
"According to health care delivery expert Betsy McCaughey"
Unbelievable. This is either willing gullibility or blatant non-journalism. Nothing like taking a slanted, paid source and calling that person an expert!
"But if that's inevitable, shouldn't there be some public discussion and debate about specific solutions?"
This editorial is the example of the problems linked to an attempt to have public discussion. Also, we have had DECADES to discuss this problem, and all that happened was the fatcats were allowed to spread propaganda.
Sadly, the only way any change can be pushed past the mess of corrupt lobbyists and politicians is to use a Trojan horse. That's pathetic, but it's a tragic reality. Also, we can't wait for the current system to collapse before we even begin to implement a solution. That fact has somehow escaped too many people for far too long.
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