News Snippets From All Beats

Many people are beginning to understand the ramifications of a Government-run Health Care system,  and to suspect the worst.  As proposed, the new system would not only control the entire Health Care Industry and your access to it, but it will also control every aspect of your life.  This will be accomplished under the principal of the “continuum of care”¹ that surrounds every person with a “collaborative” network of clinics and agencies.² The premise behind this all inclusive continuum of care is that everyone is always in some condition requiring care or  treatment depending on the fluctuating status of their wellbeing, and not the actual condition of their health.

The term wellbeing was introduced many years ago as a replacement category for health because physical health was increasingly being viewed as an insufficient means for measuring overall human health.  A person’s thoughts and attitudes weighted significantly on a person’s prognosis, and so wellbeing could also encompass the psychology of that person and prescribe psychotherapy to meet those needs. This view of treating the total person helped to popularize the holistic approach to medicine. This view is of relatively low risk when visiting a herbalist.

The key component of the idea of Government-run Health Care that is so freighting is a government dispensing treatment for attitudes.   When the government controls health care it will also manage the branch referred to as Mental Health; with its continuum of “assessments, crisis intervention, counseling, treatment, and referral to continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care.”³  When the government controls mental health, they also control all psychologists and psychiatrists, whom they will employ, and will determine what constitutes a condition requiring emergency psychiatric care.

Assessments could be designed to turn ordinary attitudes of sixty-year olds, which of course differ from those of twenty-year olds, into cries for euthanasia.  People who express disapproval of a government action or are critical of a government official could be assessed as requiring counseling, and remember that psychiatric care includes drug therapy.  The want by some in government now for the use of this latter health care option to be immediately employed was made evident by Senate Majority Leader  Harry Reid (D) of Nevada.

Senator Reid claimed recently that that the public outrage over the government plan to take over health care exhibited by those attending town hall meetings was really an effort to “sabotage” democracy.⁴  This is definitely a different slant on the First Amendment, which reads in part: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Many of the people at these meetings, who were recognized and allowed to speak, brought documentation to show how they will lose their health care under the government plan, and how their children will suffer.  Grievances for sure.

Nevertheless, Senator Reid’s diagnosis supersedes these First Amendment safeguards on the grounds of the coming new government Mental Health Care plan.  He observes that “They are doing this because they don’t have any better ideas…. It’s really simple: they’re taking their cues from talk show hosts, Internet rumor-mongerers … and insurance rackets.”⁵  (The American Health Insurance Industry will no doubt be responding to that last remark.) It seems that according to Senator Reid, these are people who cannot think and fend for themselves, and are unable to reason.  They are easily manipulated by disreputable sources such as are found on radio and the internet (he’ll deal with that later), and it is against their own personal safety and welfare for them to be free to roam the streets unsedated. The prescribed treatment would probably be restraint, and confinement to a facility where they would receive a strict diet of government-approved media, and possibly drug therapy.

While this is satiric treatment of the attitude displayed by Senator Reid,  it is not as far from the pail as it may seem.

When the government controls the dials, they can redefine what constitutes conditions such as obesity, and other health risks factors.  In the area of Preventative Treatment, where programs will be put in place to prevent disease and keep exiting conditions for escalating, patients (and that means everyone, as all will be under care) will endure ongoing assessments to monitor behavior. The controls to ensure compliance to one’s medical profile are easy enough to put into place.   A special National Health Card, or “machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card” as it is listed in H.R. 3200,⁶  could be issued and updated with new restriction codes after each visit to the clinic.

This card would have to be presented and scanned for all purchases.  A patient will take their groceries to the checkout, but only those foods approved for their diets will scan.  Remember that government has already linked the environment to human health, and some are demanding that bovine be effectively taxed out of existence under the theory of global warming.  It will be so much easier to code beef restrictions on National Health Cards so that everyone will be eating high-fiber; everyone except for Senator Reid, and others in the ruling class.  They’ll still be eating steak.  Most government officials will almost certainly be exempted from these restrictions by a Consumer National Health Division Act that will actually establish a second tier to the Government-run Health Care system for government officials.

The writing on the wall for such tyranny is as plain as the conceit and arrogance now being displayed by those officials towards the people. Not everyone sees all these possibilities as imminent realities, but many see that there is a real and present danger in a Government-run Health Care system of exactly these proportions, and worse.   There is even a provision for health practitioners to provide “advance care planning,” that would include “the continuum of end-of-life services.”⁷ That would probably be the coming demand for euthanasia government assessments are to discover exists among sixty-year olds,  and dissidents.  It is clear even now that procedures deemed to be too expensive for the contribution society receives in return from a person will be denied, and a pain pill will be dispensed instead.  A journalist producing anything other than government propaganda will score very low on contributory value no matter what their age. It will be far more cost effective to let them die than to try to change their mind.  Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accurately recognizes the Government-run Health Care plan is “downright evil,” and we are recognizing the lady from Alaska.⁸

Notes:

^1. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, HR 3200, 111^th Cong., 1^st sess., http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.txt.pdf   429. (accessed August 9, 2009)

^2. Ibid, 994.

^3. Ibid, 998-99.

^4. Yahoo News, “Top Democrat denounces health care protestors,” August 6, 2009.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090806/ap_on_go_co/us_health_care_overhaul

^5. Ibid.

^6.  America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, HR 3200, 58

^7. America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, 425.

^8. Yahoo News, “Palin says Obama’s health care plane is ‘evil’,” August 8, 2009.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090808/ap_on_re_us/us_palin_health_care

Home appliances will soon start taking their orders over the internet from a central utility manager under government control.  By installing in-home boxes the size of cable television receivers, utility managers can set electricity consumption rates for districts, neighborhoods, and houses.  Using software being developed by IBM, instructions can be remotely given to command thermostats to change settings, or shut down HVAC’s completely.  Touted will be the advantages of saving energy and the ability to switch to renewable sources as they come online, and customizing homes to occupant preferences.  For instance, rooms will automatically adjust lighting to match the identity profile of the person entering the room (which also means your whereabouts can be tracked at all times).

This illusion of control will be the trade off for surrendering all of it.  When the green evangelists begin requiring worship as a condition to receive power from mother earth, a person won’t be able to turn on so much as a light without complying.  How soon power utilities will be used as a political state tool is arguable, but the technology will be implemented soon.  Companies like IBM stand to make a fortune in Smart Energy Technology (SET).  President Obama’s stimulus package contains 10 billion for SET, and that does not include the future sales and service of all the equipment that will be required for homes and entire power grids.  Further guaranteeing windfall profits, this equipment will be required by federal law.

The former Washington DC city office of Vivek Kundra, the man Obama selected as federal chief information officer (CIO), is under investigation by the FBI, and two arrests have been made so far. Reportedly,  Yusuf Acar, who is  a security officer in the city’s technology office, took bribe money from Sushil Bansal, the head of Advanced Integrated Technologies, for awarding city contracts.  Charges also include conflict of interests, money laundering, and billing for ‘ghost employees.’  That latter scheme involves making people appear and disappear in a database.  They lead professional lives, get paid, and presumably vote and take part in government surveys which result in government policy. Boo.

Kundra, who will be working on Obama’s pet project of compiling all information on all Americans and housing it in the federal database (on pretense saving money, and a deep respect for our collective knowledge), has taken leave of absence pending the outcome of the FBI’s investigation.  Before accepting Obama’s assignment as federal CIO, Kundra was CTO for the city of Washington and worked at the office where his colleagues were arrested.

References: 

“F.B.I. Raids Obama Official’s Former Office,” Reuters, March 12, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/03/12/washington/news-us-obama-kundra-raid.html?_r=1&ref=technology