From Sam Smith
The Progressive Review – 11 Feb 2009

Washington Monthly – The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology isn’t “new”; it was created by George W. Bush five years ago. More importantly, the measure is about medical records, not limiting physicians’ treatments.

Progressive Review – While much of the foregoing is true, a reading of the legislation suggests unprecedented interference in the business of doctors and hospitals, not unlike the feds ordering every small business to use a certain software and then make regular reports on just how they are using it.

The measure did not belong in the stimulus package. It should have been a stand alone bill with full hearings, especially with the deep questions it raised concerning patient privacy.

~ View Parts I through VI of this article here.

Further, some of the language is vague enough to suggest the possibility of greater future federal control. For example:

“The Secretary shall seek to improve the use of electronic health records and health care quality over time by requiring more stringent measures of meaningful use . . .

“The National Coordinator shall annually evaluate the activities conducted under this subtitle and shall, in awarding grants, implement the lessons learned from such evaluation in a manner so that awards made subsequent to each such evaluation are made in a manner that, in the determination of the National Coordinator, will result in the greatest improvement in the quality and efficiency of health care.”

Frankly, we preferred that was left to our doctor.

The mere existence of this measure presumes, even though appearing to deal only with health records, an assumed right of the federal government to intervene in health care in a substantial way that could easily be expanded. The gestalt behind this measure is completely different than programs like single payer or expanded Medicare that are designed to deal with paying for medical care, not controlling it.

Add to this the major question of patient privacy – how long will it be before the NSA, FBI and Homeland Security have easy access to these records? – and there are more than enough reasons for this measure to have been dropped from the bailout bill.

Consider that every citizen who arrives at a hospital with an overdose or having drunk too much will be in a file easily accessible by law enforcement and others regardless of what nice promises are made to the contrary. It might even possible for the police to charge some one based on a doctor’s report of drug use. And, of course, it’s a substantial gift to the spy agencies, the biggest data collection system since the NSA started recording phone calls.

Welcome to Obama’s brave new world.

~ View Parts I through VI of this article here.

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5 Comments

  1. It is and always has been about, “Follow the Money” From the Assyrians to G W Bush… From the Japanese to Hitler, from Napoleon to the Kaiser and Flanders Fields… Look at who banked who, and what companies provided what to whom…I recall my mother telling me of seeing large ships filled to the brim with scrap steel headed out of Seattle area before WWII…We can only guess where they were headed..But I’ll be it wasn’t Disneyland.
    Because war and corruption not only go hand in hand, they cost an ambitious amount of money. One of the first rules of having money is, “never use your own money”, So, whose money was used?
    Look first at who is behind the curtain, there we find who is first and foremost the promoter of the greed for power, for wealth and more corruption… and who has access to other people’s money. Am I implying bankers? Ya think? Am I implying people like IBM, Dupont, Boeing, Douglas, General Electric… it is as of the last one hundred years alone… a very long list, And quite possibly the most culpable are us, after all, we are the ones who fell asleep at the wheel. We are the ones working for those very same companies/corporations, banks.
    As Walt Kelly so aptly put back in the fifties, “We have found the enemy and he is us”…
    While it is true that these industries have been clever, we are the ones who said, “Okay”.. I volunteered for Vietnam, because I was so tired of being harassed at Fort Benning, Georgia… I thought I would be able to have a “say” in Vietnam. I was correct, however, the price I have paid in all these years since have shifted the worth of any sanity. I have no pride for having participated… Any veteran who says other wise is deluded. War is not about pride, national or otherwise, it is about sanctioned murder for those in power, the bankers.

  2. Kathy, please don’t ever forget that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Every historically centralized society no matter how benevolent has been overrun by tyranny shortly after centralizing. look back to Da Vinci and why he refused to make prototypes of his tanks, helicopters and submarines. he knew like many that technology will always be used by those who seek more power and control over those who don’t care or are unaware of its uses. moreover, most technologies are dual (or more) purpose technologies and most of the public are not aware of this historical uses of similar technologies or the current plans for technologies. it is my considered opinion that Catherine is not merely having an intellectual exercise on technoology being good or evil inherently, rather that those who are telling us it will be used one way have lied to us and abused their power and responsibilities so many times that they are likely to do it again. AND, moreover, that the late Aaaron Russo was given information by these same people which, from his perspective, was unequivocal about the goals of their technologies. When you look into the financing of Hitler and WWII, you’ll find many familiar names and companies (in addition to IBM). then, after the war, the US brought these same nazi war criminals into the US for (military and intelligence) technological purposes. You are now seeing the culmination of those historicals paths converge into the destruction of your privacy and many civic and constitutional rights and privileges. best of luck. remember to read a little permaculture…it is one of the good solutions!

    chai b’ahava!

    Gesher Sattva

  3. I fear the medical mafia we call our health care system.

    As a provider I have enjoyed the electronic health record the feds use.

    But the system extrapolation I fear is along the lines of “showers” being gas chambers.
    Unleashed bioweapons requiring a vaccination…who gets it who does not…what rights are gained or lost by not having proof of vaccination…recalling select citizens for “booster shots.”

    Iatrogenocide.

  4. There are many money making opportunities associated with data… there’s storage, there’s management, data mining, correlation ect. So there are obvious monetary reasons for a push for consolidating the data, and convergence on an common infrastructure. However, I don’t think leveraging technology implies evil doing. It’s a sword that cuts either way. We can either do good with it, or use it for malicious purposes. Do we blame the inventor though? What can we do then? Would distributed data systems may be more palatable than the centralized systems? I don’t know. What I do worry about is the notion that because the data comes from a centralized system, that it’s the truth. In addition I am concerned about the near future becoming a place where judgment is thrown out the window replaced by low functioning people who are comfortable with being an extension of a clerical process –making decisions for us based on db rules programmed by an engineer… not a doctor. Lots of questions here…

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