Yeraze's Domain 3.0

My sister sent this to me today, an article on Bloomberg.com titled “Ruin Your Health with the Obama Stimulus Plan“.  At first I thought it was sensationalism (and it probably still is), but I was amazed I hadn’t heard of this.

It starts off innocent enough, talking about a bill attached to the huge Stimulus Package currently flowing through congress.

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.

Electronic health records, I’m with you so far.  Not an easy problem to solve, but definately one worth looking into (although it probably shouldn’t be on the Stimulus Package).

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)

Use it or face penalties.  With you so far.  Most hospitals aren’t likely to pick up something like this on their own, so something like this would be necessary.

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.

Say what?

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.

Whoa whoa whoa here.. A Formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit?  So elderly folks with a Broken Leg are just supposed to live with it?  It’s OK to lose one eye, but not both?

Looks like this is all the brainchild of Tom Daschle, who went on record with the following statement:

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.”

Now he’s just getting cocky.  And listen to this:

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).

So we’re talking about creating an agency that will suck more money than all 4 major branches of the armed forces combined, and lead to earlier deaths and a lower quality of life for the ever-increasing elderly population, and it’s “too important to be stalled by the Senate”?

Well what the hell do we have a Senate For if not this?  This seriously scares the crap outta me.  I agree that something needs to be done, but I don’t think this is it.

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