A universal construct among scams and cons is the application of temporal pressure during a period of confusion and disarray. If you don’t sign now, this fabulous opportunity will be lost! And with just such a tactic, the 1000 plus page Stimulus Act was passed earlier this year. Buried within the weighty tome were fundamental Federal health care policy changes, passed without public comment or debate. We’re probably still a year away from seeing if the “Stimulus” part of the bill will work as intended but it’s certainly valid to question why health care reform legislation needed to be stuck in there and rammed through.
If the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Chairman John Conyers can’t make any sense of proposed legislation without “two days and two lawyers”, I can’t expect casual readers to be figuring it out either. There’s plenty of chatter throughout the media, traditional and otherwise, which pretty much only serves to cloud the issues further. All we can be certain of is that the legislation passed unread!
If rubber stamping reams of legislation into law without an inkling of what you are doing sounds like a bad idea, well, it probably is. I’ve read the stories of doctors losing decision making authority to appointed government bureaucrats, of eligibility for treatment to be determined by factors such as the patient’s age, of remedies based on mathematically derived “treatment effectiveness” rather than individual particulars, of massive databases to be built – and stocked with your personal medical history and financial information, of a new form of national ID card – ostensibly for health purposes. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of all or of any of those scenarios, but I can’t say I like their remote possibility.
I like the stealthily enacted health legislation even less when scratching its surface reveals medical care may soon be doled out (or not) based on the value of a statistical life year (VSLY). It appears health care costs are to be disingenuously reduced by reducing health care itself, rather than actually lowering the cost of treatment. I’m sure that brings smiles to the Pharma/Medical groups paying to maintain financial hegemony throughout the “reform”. Naturally the wealthy will continue to receive the finest care money can buy, while the rest of us will be at the government bean counter’s mercy. Let’s hope those in charge aren’t eugenicists!