You won’t see much of this on TV in our country. The huge corporations that control health care in the U.S. stand to lose too much if we move to a national single-payer health care system. But what would be better for us? Thanks to The Real News for bringing us what some Canadians had to say.
My friend Tony was alarmed by some claims made about provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Stimulus Bill) by Betsy McCaughey in an article on Bloomberg.com (and possibly from other sources, but that’s the one he cited). My response wouldn’t fit in a Facebook note, so I’ll post it here instead.
Couple things first – the version of the stimulus bill cited in the article is the House version and NOT the bill that was passed, that being said, there is nothing in either of them that addresses the doctor/patient relationship or what kind of treatments can be covered. The topics in the bill address the creation and maintenance of medical records and the creation of an IT system to handle them. There will be a LOT of IT work there to keep schmoes like us busy. It also includes some funding for studies to provide information to doctors so they don’t have to rely exclusively on pharmaceutical and medical equipment salespeople to keep up with current treatment options.
Though I can’t deny the need for such a system, my big concern is privacy, and there are extensive stipulations in the bill about privacy and access, including recourse and penalties if there is a breach.
The reference to “Meaningful users” refers to payments to be made to healthcare professionals as incentive for adopting the government system. I’m not sure what McCaughey was getting at with that, but she totally mischaracterized what is in the bill.
The funding in the bill for comparative effectiveness research supplies grants to public and private organizations to provide information needed by healthcare workers, but does not stipulate any form of restriction or limitation on how that information is used.
There is no mention of “means-testing” in the bill, as the bill is not a health care plan. In any case, means testing (in a health care plan) would affect how much people of various incomes pay for their coverage and NOT what is covered.
The only reference in the healthcare section to “protocols” is a recommendation that open-source solutions are used.
Conclusion: Either Betsy McCaughey didn’t read the bill, read it wrong, or just hoped that YOU wouldn’t read it and accept her paranoid ideological viewpoint as fact.
And there’s my Friday night – thanks Tony!