www.healthcarefreedom.us
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
- NOV. 3 - Deadline for Comments on National Health Surveillance System
- "REPUBLICANS DON'T CARE ABOUT HEALTH CARE" - Greg Scandlen
- HEALTH FREEDOM MINUTE - "Physician Autonomy or GroupThink?" Radio broadcast
- NOV 2 - VOTE ONCE. VOTE RIGHT. Your life and liberty depend upon it!
COMMENT NOW - NATIONAL HEALTH SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM (NHIN)
PUBLIC COMMENT DEADLINE: Wed., November 3, 2010
Please speak up. The proposed national government health surveillance will be used to control your doctors. Your private medical, prescription, mental and behavioral data will be used without consent for rationing-based research to rationalize rationing.
The Stimulus bill mandates Electronic Medical Records and other Health IT systems by 2014. Doctors who fails to implement interoperable (online accessible) EMRs pay cuts from Medicare. The only way Drs. can say NO is to opt-out of Medicare (not a bad idea!)
The cost of compliance is huge. The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) predicts 50,000 new jobs to ensure health care providers implement electronic medical record systems, according to POLITICO. Thirty-four (34) percent of "health care providers" (doctors? hospitals?) are using full EMRS and 16% have a partial system; 29% are evaluating the technology and 20 percent haven't considered it yet. (Politico, 10/26/10)
To Comment on Proposed Governance of NHIN:
EMAIL: onc.request@hhs.gov (include name, city, state)
SUBJECT LINE: "Governance Workgroup Recommendations"
CCHC SUGGESTION: You may choose to just reference the table on which they are asking you to make comments, but then ignore it and make other comments. See several options below.
If you choose to use the table, go to this page to download it. You can link to it by going to the link listed in the graphic below as [DOC - 81KB]. The title of the 3-page document to use for reporting in their preferred format is: Nationwide Health Information Network (NW-HIN) Governance Roles and Responsibilities.
HOWEVER, instead of filling out their form, consider sending an email with general comments about the impact of the proposed government-imposed national health data system. Consider the following for inclusion:
- There are no consent requirements. Your private medical and other data will be placed in the government's national health info network without your consent.
- Under HIPAA, 2.2 million entities will have electronic access to your data without consent.
- Individual rights under Fourth Amendment will be violated. Government search and seizure of papers, houses, affects, and persons will be enabled without consent or search warrant.
- Personal and medical privacy will be broadly and widely infringed.
- Government monitoring (and control) of you and your doctors will be enabled through the system.
- Under ObamaCare doctors can be prosecuted for providing treatment that the government defines as "fraud, waste, and abuse." There are no definitions in law. "Data Analysis Techniques Increasingly Important in Detecting Health Care Fraud," (BNA Health IT Law & Industry Report, October 25, 2010 - subscription required)
- All of your data can be LINKED into one comprehensive record (no escape from their eyes).
- Unconsented RESEARCH is enabled through electronic access to your data (as authorized by so-called HIPAA "privacy" rule).
- Using access to treatment data, government agencies will attempt to control your doctor through use of financial, licensure, and other penalties if your doctor does not follow government-issued treatment protocols. (treatment protocols and payment restrictions coming from new ObamaCare entities)
- Patient trust, and patient willingness to divulge information to doctors, will go the way of the dinosaur.
- They are changing the name of the surveillance & tracking system (from Nationwide Health Information Network to what? Some euphemistic title that better hides the purpose??):
"Republicans Don't Care about Health Care" - Greg Scandlen
Wow, hard to imagine that the election is only a week away. Whatever the final outcome it is certain to be a very big gain for the Republicans, not only in Congress but in the states and local governments as well. All of the credit -- all of it -- goes to the great awakening and mobilization of ordinary Americans under the Tea Party banner. The Republican brand is still held in low esteem by most voters. The ONLY reason these voters are willing to vote Republican is in the hope that the party has been fundamentally changed by this awakening.
I remember in 1994, I was taking my daughter on a tour of college campuses in Virginia and North Carolina. We had just got done at Duke when the election results started coming in. The depth of the wave was evident as we listened to the local results on the car radio. Republicans were winning everything, from town council to county commissioners to state-wide races to congressional seats. This was in areas that hadn't elected a Republican since Reconstruction.
That year, too, was driven by a tidal wave of ordinary Americans who were afraid of what Democratic majorities were doing to the country, though at that time there was no national identity for the movement. Peter Jennings on ABC called it a temper tantrum by voters - unruly children who didn't understand what their betters were doing for them.
This year President Obama is already providing the narrative. He is attributing this wave to people who can't think straight because they are afraid. The parallels are striking.
The elite may not have learned anything in the intervening 16 years, but I hope the rest of us have. I was running CAHI at the time, and after the election our funding dried up. Our funders all said they had spent a lot of money on the election and now that the Republicans were in charge, they had nothing to worry about. They walked away just when they could have made a very big difference. [emphasis in this paragraph added by CCHC]
Folks, the election is only the beginning. The fact that the free market people walked away in 1995 is exactly what allowed the Congressional Republicans to go astray. It is not enough to elect good people. All that gets you is a hearing - a chance to make your case. This is especially true in health care.
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough - REPUBLICANS DON'T CARE ABOUT HEALTH CARE! They don't understand it and they aren't interested in it. What they are proposing today are just the warmed-over ideas of the last eight years (tort reform, association health plans, interstate purchase, etc.) They don't understand the pernicious role of third-party payment, or the importance of patient empowerment, or the distortions of the tax laws. Even the best of them, like Bobby Jindahl, are still tilting towards managed care. [CCHC adds: Governor Pawlenty too (2010 MN Law (ObamaCare implementation) & 2008 MN health care reform law (Mn. Statutes 62U)]
If you want something positive done about health care, you can't stop at the elections. This is the time to plan for 2011 and budget for substantial contributions to the organizations that can make the case with the new Congress and the new governors.
The ball is now in your court. If you fail to deliver now you will have no one but yourself to blame for the outcome.
-- Greg Scandlen
innovation, and the right to a confidential patient-doctor relationship.
Citizens' Council on Health Care
1954 University Ave. W., Ste. 8
Saint Paul, MN 55104
www.healthcarefreedom.us
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