Obamacare databases threaten freedoms

I want to summarize Amanda Teagarten’s talk about Obamacare’s data bases, for a simple reason. When I first began to read excerpts from Obamacare, it occurred to me that the law violates the 1^st Amendment by making some who have religious objections buy services for their fellows which strikes at their faith.  It violates the 4^th and 5^th  because the database of personal records is both an unreasonable seizure and deprivation of private property.  And it violates the 9^th and 10^th because the individual mandate takes free-market purchase away from both people and states. 

Everyone concentrated on the 10^th amendment problem which was cosigned by 26 states in a suit now in the Supreme Court. Nobody talked about the database—except OK-SAFE (Oklahomans for Soveriegnty and Free Enterprise).  And it is much more horrifying than I imagined.  So if the individual mandate is struck down but the electronic interconnections are allowed to stand, our freedoms are in deep trouble, not only in healthcare but all sorts of other things. 

What it basically amounts to is that the Feds are trying to install a system of data systems which connected would get around all the legal, regulatory and statuatory restrictions that state legislatures, Congresses and others have put in place for two hundred years.  In this scheme, at the touch of a button, not only your health records, but also your vital identity numbers, your political statements, your religious thoughts, your financial status, and many other things would be instantly accessible, privacy be damned.   Vision 2015 is the grand scheme of electronic interconnections which lets government get into examining your emails, computer and telephone uses, your tax forms, genetic information, private purchasing as well as the aforementioned IDs and healthcare records.  And then in the big strategy, this would be shared globally with not only foreign private businesses, but also governments.

And this has been creeping up on us ever since the Clinton years.  But in particular, ARRA (Stimulus Bill) said that in order for states to get federal $$$, they must allow shared information exchanges.  PPACA (Obamacare) pounces on this by instituting, with a couple dozen sections, information sharing without which the entire national health care act cannot operate. And all nullify your rights to life, liberty, and intellectual property.  That is to say, the exchanges ignore the Constitution and state restrictions on confidentiality, etc. Interestingly enough, it also lets government select certain insurers to administer policies.  (Rather like fascism in which Schindler had to be in cahoots with the Nazis if he wanted to keep his business.)

There are practical problems, of course.  First not all computers can communicate. So uniformity standards have been put in place.  Now anybody who gets a federal grant must have IT compliance and use the new standards.  Fusion centers were set up in the last 2-3 years which will be clearing houses for law enforcement such as Homeland Security as well as hospitals. (One is in Oklahoma City.) The idea is to share not only with government but also with academia and the private sector.  This would also eliminate barriers to having your information be shared internationally.  Literally the whole federal government participates, but also everyone in the UN.  Some of our local attempts to make our computer systems efficient feeds into this.  OK has recently begun to put all state systems on a consolidated software.  The IT & Chief Information Officer just became the 16^th cabinet member of the governor’s cabinet. Of course we did this to save money and get government working together.  But if we set up healthcare exchanges, the federal government will suddenly have access to all things state. OK already has an OK Health Information Exchange Trust.  But so far the governor has resisted doing an OK health care exchange until we see how the Supreme Court rules. 

So what? Well, the Healthcare exchange will start calculating Quality Adjuusted Life Years for everyone.  Your QALY tells Obamacare just how much good a particular surgery or treatment will achieve.  This in essence becomes information for whether you get care, given your age, habits, etc.  Sarah Palin, I think, called these “Death Panels” but it’s really far less personal than a panel to which one might make an emotional or legal appeal.  As for other things one might imagine what the government could do with your private habits and information, I leave that exercise for the reader. (Hmm. It says that you once wrote an opinion in a church newsletter against gay marriage.  Well, go to the back of the line for a liver transplant.)  

OK-SAFE recommends several things but the slide was not up long enough for me to copy them all.  No Health care exchanges.  Terminate OHIET.  Allow escape from the national data base system through whatever means. (by saying this, I take no responsibility, nor do I expressly suggest, that you send Obama a virus.) So that was Amanda's slide show.  Further info at www.ok-safe.com