Some updates
as Obamacare begins to creep into our daily lives. First Michelle
Malkin reports that
Buried
in the trillion-dollar stimulus law of 2009 was an electronic medical records “incentive”
program. Like most of President Obama’s health care rules, this top-down electronic
record-sharing scheme is a big fat bust.
Oversight
is lax. Cronyism is rife. The job-killing and privacy-undermining consequences have
only just begun. . . .
As for
the claim that the EMR conversion will reduce paperwork, many doctors say the reality
is just the opposite. In Greensboro, N.C., Dr. Richard Aronson told local TV station
FOX 8 that the mandate doubled the amount of paperwork in his private practice.
Everyone from optometrists to general practitioners to chiropractors to podiatrists
must divert precious time and resources to conforming with Washington health bureaucrats’
imposed vision. Some medical professionals are now warning that the dangerous phenomenon
of “distracted doctoring” is on the rise as a
result of data-driven imperatives that direct health care providers’ attention away
from their patients and onto their screens and hand-held devices.
Then there’s the still-growing
and untold number of doctors nationwide who are closing up shop or limiting their
practices and converting to “concierge care” to escape this and myriad other Obamacare
intrusions. My own primary care physician in Colorado Springs quit her regular practice
and converted to “concierge care” because of the EMR imposition. Creve Coeur, Mo.,
doctor Shari Cohen made the same move.
“The demands of caring
for my patients while navigating through the current health care delivery systems
dictated that I take more and more time away from patient care and spend an increasing
part of my day on the system itself,” she told the Creve Couer Patch. “Electronic Medical
Records was the final shove for me. It added another whole layer
in interference in the doctor-patient relationship and one I was not sure I wanted
to take on.”
More paperwork. More
waste. Less accountability. Less care. Government malpractice at work.
It's only
going to get worse. Here's more from Mark
Steyn at NRO:
Most
towns in the North Country [in New Hampshire] now have fewer doctors than they did
in the 19th century, and the smaller towns have none. The Yellow Pages lists more
health insurers than physicians, which would not seem to be an obvious business
model. . . .
Obamacare
governmentalizes one-sixth of the U.S. economy — or the equivalent of the entire
French economy. No one has ever attempted that before, not even the French. In parts
of rural America it will quickly achieve a Platonic perfection: There will be untold
legions of regulators, administrators, and IRS collection agents, but not a doctor
or nurse in sight.
Not just in New Hampshire. One healthcare center in Medina has NO primary care physician, so it jobs in out-of-town doctors once a week.
