My friend Barbara Lilley has a neat little rant over at Mercatornet.com about “Red carpet morality”. Personally, I kinda like Brangelina. Oh, I know, they got together while he was married and all that. But they are actually doing something good as well; not just promoting big families and enjoying their own, but going around the world trying to help causes they think are important. Not perfect, obviously. Nobody is. Otherwise, hey, if we didn’t pay attention to stuff like that, it wouldn’t be news. But we do and it is. So I try to laugh.
That doesn’t mean Barb is wrong. She’s right. And perhaps I’d feel more strongly about it if I had impressionable tweens and teenagers under my care. But you know, celebrities and their antics (a personal favourite these days: Jessica Simpson saying she’s proud of her body) are not making a difference in my life. By comparison, things like this, where the government gets to decide what my doctor can or cannot do, worry me a great deal more.
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.
Celebrities no doubt have a lot of power and influence. But not as much as modern governments. The latter scares me more.
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