Health Care in Stimulus Package

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There are a lot of troubling items being shoved through Congress in the name of "Economic Crisis." One of most concern is the National Healthcare Information Technology Chief, who will be granted the right to determine if physicians and hospitals are "meaningful users" of the Federal Government's health information about you. From Bloomberg News (page numbers refer to the pdf version of HR 1):

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.

A key word here is "atypical." It is my observation that most healthcare is delivered on a probability basis. Your symptoms are analyzed and compared to a curve of probable distribution regarding what the appropriate treatment should be. For sake of argument, lets say the recommended care will result in medical correction about 2/3 of the time. If your medical problem falls outside of the normal distribution central area (maybe plus or minus two standard deviations), your medical case is considered "atypical."

In a case of an atypical medical problem, your physician (or dentist for that matter), will have to take the time to delve into your symptoms much more thoroughly. That will consume more time - and cost more money. I have experienced just such a situation personally.

It looks like what the government is telling us is that some bureaucrat in Washington will insist that your physicians, surgeons, and dental practitioners stop your care (under the rationale that it will be "costly" as they define it) if your medical situation cannot be resolved using some middle ground on the curve of likely results distribution.

We need to make sure this is removed from the Economic Stimulus package for many reasons, not the least of which is that you - the American citizen - deserve the right to have your medical condition thoroughly diagnosed should you choose to have it done.