Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

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.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

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)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

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.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

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.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

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).

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.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

So that means, as it does in England, that if you are over age 50, and you need an organ transplant, you are out of luck? Too expensive for the relatively short life span ahead? I hope fucking Daschle has a heart attack requiring a triple bypass tomorrow morning....the asshole. So much for checking the organ donor box on my drivers license.

but when you need it the most you don't get it. What happened to your payments?  it went to finance health care for the poor? No , it got turned into a derivative and was sold by capitalist speculators.

Dang Charlie, for just a minute there I almost thought you were grasping the inadequacies of a socialist/communist model when you stated "You pay for health care all your life, and when you need it the most, you don't get it". That is the essence of why socialist programs fail.

Then you had to go and ruin it with your capitalist speculators paranoia.

Keep hanging around Charlie, we'll turn you back into a capitalist yet!

Apart from the merits of this plan, which I don't like, I am curious whether those who support it like the way that it is being slipped by.

Don't you think that something this large and with this potential impact on health care should have at least a few public hearings on the individual merits of the proposals, or should they all be jammed into an "economic recovery" statute?

I didn't think the NEW New Deal was going to start quite so strongly this soon. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Senate this week now that the cats out of the bag. It may be too late now that Snow, Spectre, and Collins have been bribed.

I believe that there truly is a tipping point for the populace when it comes to being deceived.

I didn't think the NEW New Deal was going to start quite so strongly this soon. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Senate this week now that the cats out of the bag. It may be too late now that Snow, Spectre, and Collins have been bribed.

I believe that there truly is a tipping point for the populace when it comes to being deceived.

who slipped this into the bill. Think that person needs to be watched carefully.

Charles Krauthammer had a piece a couple months ago when people were saying that Obama was inheriting a government that could not affor grand plans he promised.

Krauthammer said that the fact that we were in a crisis would be HOW Obama gets his plans accomplished.  He would be able to jam things into emergency measures that otherwise would not have passed.

People voted because they were concerned about the economy.  That does not necessarily mean that they all favor certain health care measures.  However, by using the crisis he is able to avoid the legislative hearings that he would have had to have other wise.  

The same thing will happen with cap and trade.  The majority of people voted for the economy.  The enviornment had disappeared as an issue by the time of the election.  

However, he will be able to sneak stuff in saying this is part of the economic plan.  (There is already a huge amount for "global warming research," which is hundreds of millions that won't produce one job.

This really the next Newsweek cover

this is just a rehash of her article in The New Republic back in late 1993 attacking the proposed Clintion health care reforms.And we all know where those went.Though the essay itself was good enough to launch BM into a single term as Lt Guv of New York.

Missed this time around the federal mandate to insure that health care professionals be represented in proportion to their % of the population.Must have been realy tough to give up that liberal dream.

Don't worry.Barring a revolution you will not live to see socialized medicine in the USA.Keep boosting your posting tally though.

for two major reasons.

1) To gin up fear so that the NEW New Deal/FDR II can take hold. His fear mongering is worse than Bush's use of terrorism to get his way with the military.

2) To lower expectation so that he will be seen as the savior when things turn out not so bad.

FDR was accused of doing the same thing

I don't have the numbers right now, but I remember seeing someone yesterday calculating the Carter Misery Index. Today's number is small and pales in comparison to even the recessions of the Carter era, nevermind the Great Depression.

on the observant passerby that notices it, wasting your time asking why she's seems to be hanging out in the neighborhood?

And then your second and only thought is “Hmm, can’t be THAT bad. I’ve put this kind of fire out before. No worries. Look my hair's on fire. . . Anyone care to go for a walk with me?”

Brilliant!

The essence of capitalism is the profit motive. A well person pays for but never needs health care. A well person generates profit for capitalist health care systems. A sick person creates a loss for the capitalist system. So sick people must die quickly and well people must never get sick in order for the capitalists to maximize profit under this system.