Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Is Stimulus a Trojan Horse for Health Care Reform?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_08-2009_02_14.shtml#1234231160
Are radical reforms of the private health care system buried in the
stimulus bill? Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 cover story in The New
Republic helped sink the Clinton Administration's health care reforms,
thinks so. In an [1]opinion piece for Bloomberg, she writes:
The bill�s health rules will affect �every individual in the United
States.� Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by
a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your
fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It
will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.
But the bill goes further. 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. 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.� . . .
Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional.
Daschle supported the Clinton administration�s health-care overhaul
in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year
ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly
before critics mount an opposition. �If that means attaching a
health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,� he said. �The
issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.�
I recognize McCaughey's 1994 analysis is disputed, and it is entirely
possible she is mis-reading the language of the stimulus bill too. At
the same time, it would not surprise me were all sorts of mischief
buried deep within the massive bill. Hence my question: Is she correct
in her assessment of the health care provisions of the stimulus? I
would be particularly interested in the views of my co-blogger David
Hyman (who's probably forgotten more about health care policy than
I'll ever know) and others who follow this issue more closely than I
do.
References
1.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs
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