Heath Care Issues in the Stimulus Plan

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” ([pages] 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.”

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.
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Source: Bloomberg

Note: Did you know such things have been included in the "emergency" stimulus package? All we hear about is "jobs, jobs, jobs". What jobs are created by this section? A job for a young bureaucrat to write letters to senior citizens, telling them to "grin and bear it"?