NOTE #1: There are 7 hours left of the Minnesota legislative session. HF1341—the health department’s bill to grab baby DNA and repeal genetic privacy—is on the Calendar in the House, but no word yet.

NOTE #2:  We will continue to deliver petitions against HF 1341 to the Governor until the legislature adjourns without passage of the bill (or similar language elsewhere)..or the Governor signs or vetoes the bill.

MN State Capitol at Sunset (TB)

CCHC Legislative News!

• Your Data — Their Control
• MN Meddling: New Law Expands Government Interference
• Medicare:  Bad New Could Be Good News
  
• ObamaCare Master Plan – More Data; Less Care
  

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  Your Data, Their Control
  Republicans should take a lesson from Hong Kong’s Sir John Cowperthwaite. As former Financial Secretary, he refused to collect data to prevent the bureaucratic impulse toward central planning.  By refusing to collect economic statistics about Hong Kong during his tenure, he helped usher in the island’s unprecedented growth into an international financial center. “I did very little,” Sir John once said. “All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it.” That would be statistics.On July 1, 2009, medical records data from all Minnesotans will be shipped electronically by insurers to a data warehouse in Maine. No consent is required. The Minnesota Department of Health will own the data and use it to monitor and analyze physician treatment decisions and patients…and eventually ration care by statistical renderings of “cost-effectiveness.” The cost of the collection and analysis program is more than $5 million over the first three years. Health officials have no idea how to do what they want to do (see MDH Request for Information) but the likely impact will be punitive bureaucratic controls…and less access to care.Too many Republican leaders fail to understand that government data collection is tied to government control. Legislation at the state and federal level supported by Republican lawmakers and free market groups is chock full of new registries, repositories and electronic data sharing. Specific collections include patient outcomes, treatment patterns, and “quality” of health care. Report cards on doctor “performance,” and payment penalties will follow.

  Rationing of health care is enabled by such government data collection, analysis and payment schemes. Supporters of a  national interoperable online medical records system expect to use the system to nationalize health care—and the data to rationalize rationing of medical care. See “Evidence Based Medicine: Rationing Care; Hurting Patients, a paper written by CCHC’s president Twila Brase, and commissioned by the American Legislative Exchange Council, 12/2008.

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  MN Meddling: New Law Expands Government Interference
  Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty may have line item vetoed some of the money in the health and human services bill (HF 1362), but a full-sized veto was warranted. The legislation extends to new heights government interference in health care. The list of troubling items in the bill (beyond the eligibility and spending increases) that we provided to legislators during the House floor debate include the following (with page and line #):•  Electronic prescribing mandate that will allow government tracking of your prescriptions and pharmacy choice. (62.4 )
  •  Electronic prescribing mandate allows pharmacies access to medical record information without your consent. (62.8 and 61.34)
  •  Nationalized medical records—by requiring conformance with federal sharing/reporting in Econ. Stimulus. (HITECH) (52.9)
  •  No payment for treating hospital-acquired conditions. Can hospitals and doctors prevent these various complications? (76.13)
  •  Government to establish performance thresholds for health care provider for “combined cost and quality.” (78.8)
  •  Health Services Policy Committee will track provider practice patterns. (93.19)
  •  DHS authorized to use “any other means available to verify family income” (to keep children on MinnesotaCare). (133.28)
  •  Collection of statistics on asthma hospital admissions. (151.6)
  •  Huge government-endorsed research project on patient “health care outcomes and treatment effectiveness.” (151.24)
  •  Substance abuse tracking system. (174.31)
  •  Data sharing/exchange on individuals authorized between 3 Departments (Health, Human Services, Mental Health). (198.1)

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  Medicare:  Bad News Could be Good News
  The future of Medicare is bleak—and that’s good news if you look at it the right way. The entitlement program’s expected demise is an opportunity to take strong steps now to free current and future senior citizens from the evolving life-threatening rationing strategies in play today and impending in the near future.Medicare will become insolvent in 2017, according to the latest Trustees report released May 12, 2009. In 2008, they reported insolvency by 2019. One year later, the date is 2017. Next year’s announced date of demise could be be 2015. Summary: “The Medicare Report shows that the HI Trust Fund could be brought into actuarial balance over the next 75 years by changes equivalent to an immediate 134 percent increase in the payroll tax (from a rate of 2.9 percent to 6.78 percent), or an immediate 53 percent reduction in program outlays, or some combination of the two.”Liberals will look at Medicare’s impending insolvency as rationale for a national health care system. Conservatives should look at the Medicare crisis as rationale for bringing freedom and free markets to the fastest growing segment of our population, people over the age of 65.  See CCHC paper: “Medicare: Need an Escape Plan, not a Rescue Plan”

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  ObamaCare Master Plan – More Data; Less Care
  Peter Orszag is President Obama’s director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and Obama’s chief health care strategist. He was also the person who put the $1.1 billion “comparative effectiveness research” (rationing) initiative and the national health data system into the Economic Stimulus bill. In 2007, as head of the Congressional Budget Office, he said in a presentation that electronic medical records not used for data-based controls on care will not save money. Thus, here is what he wrote in The Wall Street Journal on May 15, 2009:

“…How can we move toward a high-quality, lower-cost system? There are four key steps: 1) health information technology, because we can’t improve what we don’t measure; 2) more research into what works and what doesn’t, so doctors don’t recommend treatments that don’t improve health; 3) prevention and wellness, so that people do the things that keep them healthy and avoid costs associated with health risks such as smoking and obesity; and 4) changes in financial incentives for providers so that they are incentivized rather than penalized for delivering high-quality care. [CCHC NOTE: incentives for one thing tend to mean penalties for the other]

“Already, the administration has taken important steps in all four of these areas. In February, the president signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is providing resources for electronic medical records, patient-centered health research, and prevention and wellness interventions so that we have the infrastructure in place to lower health spending in the long run….”

This is a plan for centralized control, based on a national health surveillance system. Orszag can’t take full credit for this idea. Hillary had it in her plan first, along with “quality” monitoring (Title V, Clinton Health Plan).

Citizens’ Council on Health Care supports freedom for patients and doctors, medical
innovation, and the right to a confidential patient-doctor relationship.