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While everyone is talking about their privacy going bye-bye with a national healthcare database that will give the government access to your medical records, there is something I don't hear anyone talking about:
Researchers use databases to do matching with other databases.
To hear politicians talk, you'd think the reason they want to spend a gazillion dollars on this national healthcare database is to move your records electronically from one doctor to another. Yeah, right.
Let's say the federal government purchases your supermarket's database that contains the record of your store purchases as placed on your supermarket store card when you buy stuff and then matches that purchase data with your medical records in their healthcare database. Maybe you don't buy enough vegetables or buy butter too often for a family of whatever size. Maybe you buy too much beer and wine. Maybe you have a sexually transmitted disease and they don't see any condom purchases. How do you think that information could be used? Right now, the store probably uses the info for ordering products/food and advertising. But with a federal government heathcare database matching program, that store card database has the potential for other nefarious uses.
What if they match your medical records in their national healthcare database to your credit card purchases to see if you lead a risky life? You know, they go to Visa, Mastercard, American Express and ask for data records of your purchases for the last 5 years and then match it to your medical records. Maybe you don't lead a risky life, but what about your teenaged son or daughter on your health insurance plan?
Maybe they'll take GPS data, Easy Pass data or red light camera data, match it with telephone records to see who is talking on the phone or texting while they drive and match it to your medical records in the national healthcare database. Maybe they'll share their results with your car insurance company.
What if they match your medical records in their national healthcare database to the State's database of your Motor Vehicle infractions to see if you are a risk?
I'm sure you can think of other databases that could potentially be matched to your records in the national healthcare database. But all anyone is talking about is privacy at risk after some government employees know your health history. I don't think that's the only threat.
However, I've yet to see this sort of thing happen to those with Medicaid, Medicare, VA, or military coverage.
Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC I agree. This a long held belief of mine as well.
I also question the merits of some forms of treatment for terminal illnesses. At what point do you just concede that life isn't fair and no one is guaranteed tomorrow? I am a very compassionate person. I don't want to see anyone suffer and I don't want anyone's life cut short. But a line has to be drawn in my opinion. Ensuring that someone has another 6 months to live is fantastic, but at what cost and who pays for it? To me, that's a hard sell because the outcome is still the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alaskapat528
And tell me, do you feel the same way if God Forbid this is your child (if you have any), or a loved family member?
I have already lived through this with the cancer that took my husband's life 11 years ago. Though, according to his doctors, this cancer had been growing and spreading for a year at least and probably two, the very first symptoms of it came only four months before he died. Doctors tried radiation, which did nothing at all; the cancer continued to spread. They then wanted to start chemo-therapy treatments, which they said should prolong his life another 5-6 months. Since he was on pain killers that left him basically unable to think, and he had made me his medical proxy, I had to decide whether to go ahead with treatment or take him home. I took him home, where he died less than a month later. As much as I miss him now, if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it exactly the same way. I could not have watched him go through that much pain for five to six months just to watch him die any way.
To help get you the answers you need, White House Health Reform Director, Nancy-Ann DeParle, is holding a live video chat through Facebook and WhiteHouse.gov.
Estimates say it will cost about a trillon. $1,000,000,000,000 This cost is on top of everything else Obama is spending on...
I pity America's young voters. They will pay off Obama plans for decades even after he leaves office.
The estimates are now up to $1.6 Trillion, my guess is judging by the way gubmint programs always run way over initial estimates, it will end up costing about $4.5 Trillion. And that is just to fill the gap from 30 million to 17 million uninsured.
Barry doesn't know what in the bill but he's sure it's going to be great for us peons.
So many of you are acting as if the behemoth insurance industry wont even try to adjust, as if it can only continue their current black-hole course or else collapse. Not at all true. Dont work against yourselves on behalf of the insurance industry.
Reid: No health care vote in Senate until fall - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul - broken link)
Quote:
WASHINGTON – Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday abandoned plans for a vote on health care before Congress' August recess, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's ambitious timetable to revamp the nation's $2.4 trillion system of medical care.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official pronouncement on what had been expected for weeks, saying, "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."
No kidding, dirty harry.
Good - now I can put this issue to rest for a while.
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[1] Government imposed scarcity - the licensing of medical care workers and criminalizing those who give care but are not licensed, imposes scarcity. If you want "Universal" health care, you have to decriminalize health care. Let the customer decide, not the government, on what construes satisfactory medical care. Provide a public access database of those who have passed exams and acquired credentials.
[2] Government imposed overhead expenses - the socialist health and tax imposes overhead expenses, so do mandated paperwork and storage of records. Those costs pass to the customer - who pays all the bills - as demonstrated by the high cost.
[3] Private insurance imposed overhead expenses - the bureaucracy imposed by private insurance has changed the physician's office into an administrative jungle of forms, receptionists, intake clerks, and office managers... which all have to be paid by the customer - eventually.
[4] Inequitable Tort awards - malpractice insurance premiums are sky high, as are awards. The sad truth is that the lawyers reap the majority of the benefits at the expense of the physicians, victims, and the patients who eventually pays the bill.
[5] Monopolies - Allopathic medicine has a bad habit of claiming any competing medical system as "quackery", despite their own history of bad practices and ineffective treatments.
The simplest way to reduce costs is to eliminate the parasites who feed on the transaction chain.
Patient ==> $$$ ==> Care giver.
----- NOT -------
Patient ==> $$$$ ==> GOVERNMENT ==> $ Care giver.
One thing is certain, any "national" (government controlled) medical system will benefit the government, first, and foremost. For they will have another excuse to tax, control, spend, manipulate and bribe their way to greater power.
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Whitehouse announcement received today....
