Choice I Can’t Afford: HR 3200, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act”

Now, I have to admit, I haven’t read or thought much about the current healthcare system we are in, nor thought especially deeply about the government’s attempt to take it over. I’m just a little civil liberties blogger, and issues this big are, well, a bit difficult to wrap one’s mind around, so I have not chosen to write of it here.

Word on the street is that the White House is especially interested in bloggers who have negative things to say about the Democrats’ proposed healthcare bill. They are combing the Internet looking for the naysayers. While of course this is not censorship, this smells a lot like the use of fear to silence the dissenters. And *that* is solidly in my territory, so yes, I have something to say. You have sent me the engraved invitation…and as my mother taught me, it’s impolite to ignore such a request.

Healthcare spending is usually portrayed as some vampire on the U.S. economy, sucking out its lifeblood and depriving millions of the basic care they need. By the White House’s own estimates, medical spending accounts for 18% of the economy. While other industries dry up as they are superseded by technology or move out of the country, spending on healthcare grows apace, like a healthy weed shooting up from an otherwise dying garden.

In the meantime, the government, like a hungry Leviathan, needs more money to do the work of smothering us all to death with laws and regulations, most of them not dreamt of by the framers of our Constitution. In the last six months the worm has swallowed up the stock market and the banking industry and the automobile industry. The worm still seeks its surfeit of money, and gosh, a good place to get some more would be the healthcare industry, the healthy, growing, and free place that it is. One could argue that this is a portion of the economy that is producing the most…and the Leviathan cannot sleep, jealous that it does not own this means of production as well.

Owning the means of production…where have I heard this phrase? Oh, bother, it escapes me.

Let me pause to point out our government’s stunning successes when it takes over business that once was privately conducted in this country. Amtrak, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security? If not run inefficiently or corruptly, these experiments have either had to be bailed out or are on the verge of financial collapse.

The worm is also envious of our freedoms, and the ironically named “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” (HR 3200) promises to deprive us of the freedoms we once shared only with our physicians and our families. Now, I must admit, I did not read the more than 1,000 pages of this bill; indeed, the massive thing damn near froze my computer completely. I had to rely on the kindnesses of my fellow bloggers who are already privileged enough to be on the White House’s list of dissenters.

Let’s go first to page 429, part of a series of pages which describes the requirement for an “Advance Care Planning Consultation” for all Medicare patients. Isn’t it all so helpful, requiring one’s healthcare practitioner to discuss end of life issues with an older patient? Of course we should all be going to our families and our attorneys and drafting a living will, but now our practitioners will be specifically asking if we have done this, and, if we have not, referring us to ”a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning, including the national toll-free hotline, advance care planning clearinghouses, and State legal service organizations…” (pp. 425-426). The practitioner is also to provide information about end of life issues such as hospice care, and the withholding of food, water, and antibiotics.

So we have a planting of a seed, and the probing for information. Presumably, this practitioner is equipped with the ubiquitous clipboard and will be recording your discussion. And what of clearinghouses? What information will be recorded? And how long will each individual get to truly consider his or her choices before the ultimate decision is recorded in the medical record?

If you have read other entries in this blog, perhaps you know my mistrust of government databases. Information often is not accurate. Information is shared from agency to agency without our knowledge, and sometimes misunderstandings are freely propagated, often as the result of profiling of entire groups of American dissidents. Indeed, my blogger friends are telling me that HR 3200 proposes the creation of a National ID Health Card (on page 58)…and the Leviathan will also gain access to our personal and financial information (page 195).

Now that they own this means of production, they will concern themselves with whether we are productive. This bill would also allow the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to determine what treatments would be most cost-effective under nationalized health care…a kind of “medical rationing,” if you will. Sorry, fellow bloggers who have claimed that this agency would be established under this bill. This agency already exists. I am thinking their powers would be expanded if HR 3200 passes.

Now this is a 1,000 page bill and I have only brought up a few points…surely a few sticking points should not invalidate an otherwise good bill. A responsible blogger should take the time to read the entire bill, as I am sure all the members of Congress have done. But I boldly make this statement. These points are violative enough of our civil liberties that I don’t give a damn what else is in this bill. Opening up our end of life plans to doctors working for the public dime is not my idea of freedom. Sharing my financial information with officials empowered to make decisions about the medical care of myself and my family is not freedom or “choice.” And entrusting my medical information to a government who has already shown itself to be untrustworthy in maintaining and sharing other types of information about us does not seem to be a good exchange for more “affordable” health care. Sorry, Obama and Congress. Put me on the list of dissenters.

Report me here: flag@whitehouse.gov