You Thought Hillary was Scary?

Let's just assume the rambling answers and obvious irritation with being a mere human politician were part of the jitters of a first press conference.

Let's also give the guy a pass when he says he won't listen to admittedly genuine and legitimate concerns that we should not pass the stimulus bill, because he came preconditioned to take big government actions to "save" us from ourselves, and because he believes there is a consensus among economists to take aggressive actions.

Still, there remains a lot about this bill he is not telling us, or is minimizing. He mentioned, for example, that we are still using triplicate paper forms when all he wants to do is modernize the healthcare system, utilize electronic capability, and make it work better, smarter and cheaper. Really?

This problem has been debated and worked on by task forces (I was on one for several years with the Southern Governor's Association), and there are immense problems with privacy protection and sharing of information across state lines, because the states have different laws and requirements. But I am not worried about those mundane issues, nor is he.

What is in this stimulus package should scare all of us to death. However he downplays it, this is an outright but well-concealed ploy to force government control and rationing of healthcare, and he intends to do it without fair debate.

If you like everything in the stimulus bill, you should still urge your senators and representatives to reject it, because of this callous, underhanded, devious and duplicitous attempt to force government healthcare on all of us in the midst of an economic crisis, and with no sunshine or debate.

I received this today from Dave Patton, quoting a expert in the field:

"In a Bloomberg News commentary, Betsy McCaughey writes:

“Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion…Senators should read these provisions and vote against them…The bill’s health rules will affect ‘every individual in the United States.’”

McCaughey reports that the bill calls for all medical treatments to be tracked electronically by a new federal bureaucracy known as the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, which will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is administering what the federal government considers appropriate and cost effective health care. All this is the brain child of former Senator and disgraced tax cheat Tom Daschle, who recently had to withdraw his name from nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The goal, writes McCaughey, is “to reduce costs and guide your doctor’s decisions. 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 learn 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. “Meaningful user is not 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.”

Daschle says health care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors, he says, should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. And you thought the government wouldn’t ration your health care."

Thanks, Dave, for pointing out what has been largely hidden from the public.