the population.
This is the Hunting of a President 2.0.
Are we going to stand idly by?
Or are we going to start typing.
Something we happen to already be good at.
For example.
Wingnut columnist says Obama wants the governemt to deny your needed healthcare.
Health care Nazi: No treatment for you!
But the federal government, which is monitoring your medical charts, decides you don't deserve any treatment. Too bad. The fine print was in the Obama-Pelosi Stimulus Package.
From a report today:
The bill's health rules will affect "every individual in the United States" (445, 454, 479). 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.
I wrote
So Peter, lets say you have for instance, Congestive Heart Failure. Your doctor who graduated in the 70s has prescribed Furosemide and an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor such as Enalapril.
As a layperson who trusts his doctor has only his best interests at heart, you take solace in the fact that the combination diuretic/ACE inhibitor seems to help with your symptoms, but as CHF is progressive you realize that you will eventually suffocate from the fluid that pours into your lungs as your left ventricular function deteriorates over time.
But then your doctor who was not aware that though beta blockers were believed to be counter intuitive at one time, sees that the new gold standard treatment for CHF includes adding a beta blocker such as Carvedilol to inhibit the sympathetic nervous system's dleterious effects in response to a failing heart, thus preserving Peter's left ventricular function.
"Understanding the consequences of underusing b-blockers is important because of the implications for current policy debates over quality-of-care measures...
The additional costs of b-blocker medication over 20 years were projected
to be $570 million. However, because increased b-blocker use would
decrease CHD treatment costs, the net cost was estimated to be only $158 million."
So dittoheads are against the most efficacious health care money can buy?
Fuat A, Hungin AP, Murphy JJ. Barriers to accurate diagnosis and effective management of heart failure in primary care: qualitative study. BMJ 2003;326(7382):196.
Baker DW, Hayes RP, Massie BM, Craig CA. Variations in family physicians' and cardiologists' care for patients with heart failure. Am Heart J 1999;138:826-34.