Electronic Health Records

The Serious Tracking of Americans Begins

July 16, 2010

Economic Policy Journal - They have passed the health bill, they have passed the financial regulations bill, and they have snuck stuff into the stimulus package bills. They are going to track your money and your body. Here’s the first few things they are doing. This is step one. It will only get worse from here.

According to numismaster.com:

…the Health Care Bill mandates, starting on January 1, 2012, federal law will require coin and bullion dealers to report to the Internal Revenue Service all gold and silver coin purchases and sales greater than $600.

No, that is not an error; they tacked the gold coin tracking regulations into the health bill. They are just tacking stuff on wherever they can.

As for your body, you will be required to have an “electronic health record” by 2014. They snuck this into one of the “stimulus” bills. The electronic record will include an obesity rating. The information will be required to be on a “national exchange” with only secure access (Hah!). Why the F does your obesity rating have to be on a national exchange? This is a tip off to how micro-managed they are going to attempt to run your life.

Keep in mind that the health bill and financial “reform” bill are thousands of pages, with much of the details left up to the new agencies to fill in. Obama is appointing major league interventionists to head these agencies. They are completely clueless as to how an economy works. Their regs will be over the top. It will stifle America in so many ways, it is difficult to imagine. I was in East Berlin the year before the Wall came down. I saw what constant monitoring and micro-management did to people. It is not pretty. The gray, the drab, the despair was everywhere. When you can only take orders and wait for approvals and are constantly watched, it saps the life out of you. America is going to be changing and the government is going to try and watch you and monitor your vitals, as if you were a lab rat, as it does the changing.

It is not going to be pretty.

(Thanks to John Perez for the gold coin info.)

Gold Coin Sellers Angered by New Tax Law

Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

July 15, 2010

CNSNews.com – New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records--that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year--must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.

The obesity-rating regulation states that every American's electronic health record must:

“Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”

The law also requires that these electronic health records be available--with appropriate security measures--on a national exchange.

The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law. Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the "meaningful use" of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers--including doctors and hospitals--must establish "meaningful use" of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing "meaningful use" of EHRs.

Section 3001 of the stimulus law says:

"The National Coordinator shall, in consultation with other appropriate Federal agencies (including the National Institute of Standards and Technology), update the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (developed as of June 3, 2008) to include specific objectives, milestones, and metrics with respect to the following: (i) The electronic exchange and use of health information and the enterprise integration of such information.‘‘(ii) The utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014."

Under this mandate in the stimulus law, Secretary Sebelius issued a regulation--developed by Dr. Blumenthal--that requires that all EHRs keep track of a person’s Body Mass Index (BMI) score. Body Mass Index is a ratio between a person’s weight and height, and is used to determine whether or not someone is overweight or obese. It is the preferred method of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for measuring obesity.

Michelle Obama has made dealing with the problem of childhood obesity the main theme of her term as First Lady.

According to the CDC, “BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.”

A person’s BMI score is used as a tool to screen for obesity or excessive body fat that could lead to other health problems. While it does not actually measure body fat directly, according to CDC, the BMI scores generally correlate with a person’s body fat percentage.

The new regulations also stipulate that the new electronic records be capable of sending public health data to state and federal health agencies such as HHS and CDC. The CDC, which calls American society “obesogenic”--meaning that American society itself promotes obesity-- collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesity nationwide.

“Electronically record, retrieve, and transmit syndrome based public health surveillance information to public health agencies,” the regulations read.

With the spread of electronic health records, the CDC apparently will be able to collect such data more efficiently and with greater accuracy because the electronic record keeping systems can send the data automatically, eliminating the need for government--both state and federal--to keep, send, and process physical records.