We linked the Bloomberg piece this morning describing what the "stimulus" will do to ration care under Medicare. Also in the stimulus will be a federal monitoring of your medical history and treatment - this from our Canadian friend at Small Dead Ducklings:
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.”
[...]
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties.
If Obama screws up the American health care system, where the Hell are Canadians supposed to go?
If they want docs to give up their autonomy, they had better find a new, lesser breed of docs in this country. And I'd rather fight with an insurance company about my medical choices than fight with a federal bureaucrat. If the insurance company doesn't want to pay, I can at least pay for it myself.
