COLUMN: Too fat for the Feds?

Wake up and smell the coffee – and put down your soda, chips or french fries while you are at it.

Just when you think the government could not get any more intrusive, Health and Human Services director Kathleen Sebelius announced last week that the government will be tracking the body mass index (BMI) of every citizen over the age of two by 2014.

Not only will the feds be tracking how fat you are, they also will keep track or whether or not you smoke, what your blood pressure is, what medications you take and record applicable demographic information all as part of the new nationwide electronic health records (EHR) system.

Early in 2009, President Obama said he wanted EHRs in place within the next five years to “cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests”?

That sounds great, but he left out the part about EHRs being a mandatory documentation of very personal health details that may or may not have anything to do with your reason for visiting your health care provider. He also neglected to explain that physicians and other health care providers will receive $27 billion of your taxpayer dollars over the next ten years to perpetuate this intrusion into your private life.

This funding is provided courtesy of America’s favorite boondoggle, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Specifically, this $27 billion is being funneled to health care providers as a little known part of the ARRA called the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009.

Your doctor or your hospital is eligible to receive part of this multi-billion dollar windfall as long as they use “certified EHR technology” in a “meaningful manner.” The government of course will decide what constitutes a meaningful manner.

To further incentivize health care providers, the government has also said it will penalize those who do not comply with the reporting mandates by cutting their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. In short, use of EHRs is not really optional for providers or patients. The law actually requires the “National Coordinator” to implement the use of EHRs “for each person in the United States by 2014.”

That means you my friend.

The use of EHRs would not be objectionable if you, the patient, had any control over what data was recorded and how it is used. The problem is, you will have no say whatsoever.

Think about some of the medications you see advertised on television. Anyone who takes meds for erectile dysfunction, depression, heartburn, bladder control, etc. will be part of a massive medical database searchable by condition, prescription usage and any number of other criteria. How many men really want to be on the Viagra list?

Well, it does not really matter what you want. Privacy and doctor/patient confidentiality will soon be a thing of the past.

Not only will your medical history be instantly viewable by the health care providers nationwide, it will be routinely monitored by the government. The new regulations actually stipulate that information will be sent to the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Health and Human Services and other public health agencies.

Still not worried? Consider this: once the government is paying your health care bills, who do you think will be making the decisions about the health care you receive? You? Your doctor? A government bureaucrat who just checked your EHR and decided not to waste money treating your bum knee until you dropped 20 pounds?

Any potential benefit of EHRs is currently outweighed by the lack of patient control over the records and the potential misuse of the information contained therein.

The obesity tracking requirement is simply a reminder of what the government can and will do as federally provided health care becomes a reality.

Kristi Reed is a reporter for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at kreed@barrowjournal.com.