A HEALTH-TECH MONOPOLY

Democrats are using the economic "stimulus" bill to create a health information monopoly that will help centralize government control of the health-care market.

Democrats have decided that the government will simply pick the next Blu-Ray. Instead of building on a voluntary public-private standard-setting body created by the Bush Administration, the stimulus bill codifies it as a federal office and gives it broad new powers if private companies are not "substantially and adequately" meeting the needs of doctors and hospitals.

This will certainly muffle innovation. Anyway, what's the rush? Democrats give the game away by mandating that most medical providers who aren't linked into the government-approved health information network after 2016 will start to be penalized.

Their ultimate political goal, however, is cost control, explains the Journal. For the Pete Stark Democrats whose ambition is Medicare for all -- no exceptions -- giving government exclusive control over electronic health information and reporting is a step toward "comparative effectiveness" research.

That in turn will be used to impose price controls and deny some types of medical treatment and drugs. And because government is able to skew the whole health system through Medicare and Medicaid, comparative effectiveness could end up micromanaging the practice of medicine.

Source: "A Health-Tech Monopoly; Another surprise in the stimulus fine print," Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2009.

[I.e., when the issue of socialized health care was debated in '94, it lost. So this time around they're skipping the debate and covertly slipping it into spending bills that must be passed now to avert "catastrophe".

The most transparent/ethical administration/congress in history?

We're being rolled.]

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