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Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc.
A Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943
Omnia pro aegroto

Action Alert - "The Stimulus"

02/02/2009

Dear AAPS Action Team,

Please contact your Senator�s office on Monday or Tuesday and tell them to vote against the so-called �Stimulus� bill, which comes to the floor on Wednesday the 4th of February 2009 (Please also pass this alert to your friends, family members and colleagues.)

Find your Senator here:?www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm The $819 billion-dollar �stimulus� passed the House of Representatives last week with a vote of 244 to 188 without a single Republican vote. We need to reach out to all of the Republicans and any fiscally conservative Democrats in the Senate and tell them to hold strong against this wasteful and counter-productive bill.

As we all know this will not �stimulate� the economy but further weaken it and could quite possible contribute to moving us from recession to depression. Worse, it is a stealth vehicle to pass numerous provisions that will be harmful to patients and physicians, and help push us toward a government takeover of American medicine. They include:

  • Up to $23 billion for health information technology �to jumpstart efforts to computerize health records.� (Pg. 161 �164)

  • Up to $2 billion to expand the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.


  • $1.1 million to HHS to study �comparative effectiveness,� $400 million of which can be used at Daschle�s discretion to �conduct, support, or synthesize research that compares the clinical outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of items, services, and procedures that are used to prevent, diagnose, or treat diseases, disorders, and other health conditions; and encourage the development and use of clinical registries, clinical data networks, and other forms of electronic health data that can be used to generate or obtain outcomes data.� (Pg. 135)


  • Up to $600 million to double funding for doctors and nurses of the National Health Services Corps. �A key component of attaining UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE REFORM will be ensuring the supply of primary health care providers family medicine, internal medicine, pediatricians, dentists, and nurses.� (Pg. 50)


  • Up to $2.77 billion for �emergency public health� mobilization, including stockpiling vaccines and administering them under the Medical Emergency Powers Act.


  • Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) Fifteen political-appointees from ranks of federal officers will be responsible for all �health-related programs.�


  • Draft language from the committee report about the National Health Board -- �By knowing what works best and presenting this information more broadly to patients and healthcare professionals�while those that are found to be less effective and in some cases, more expensive, will no longer be prescribed.�

TALKING POINTS:

  1. Creation of a CER would be enabling legislation for government rationing of medical care for all with decisions by political appointees. We need to take time for public scrutiny and hearings.


  2. These are not short- or medium range stimulus provisions. For example, HIT adoption is at least a 10-year project. HIPAA is a disclosure rule and does not offer any real privacy protections, so HIT would allow the increased dissemination of private medical information without consent.


  3. Administrative savings by health information technology have been vastly overestimated, based on adoption rates projected around 2002. The actual rates are much lower, but the promised savings have not been adjusted.


  4. Congressional leadership claims that the intention of health care reform is to SPEND LESS so how do it acts as a stimulus? Any health care �reform� should be part of a separate package, not masquerading as stimulus.

Other Actions:

Background: