Thread: For Kathleen Sebelius, desperate times call for questionable measures to advance Obam

Policy: Health Care For Kathleen Sebelius, desperate times call for questionable measures to advance Obamacare




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By Erik Telford | AUGUST 27, 2013 AT 1:01 PM

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Topics: Op-Eds Obamacare Illinois Health Care Kathleen Sebelius
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius speaks during an event discussing the... Illinois officials are using taxpayer money to hire an army of minimum-wage community organizers to promote Obamacare, with the goal of boosting enrollment in the program that continues to be extraordinarily unpopular with their fellow citizens.
But this type of shameful and desperate maneuvering has been going on for months, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has been pulling the strings at the center of the operation.
In wrangling the support of healthcare companies her department is now empowered to regulate, Sebelius has solicited donations for “Enroll America” — the nonprofit tasked with publicizing — and thus walking a very thin line between corporate cronyism and outright extortion by a public official.
Enroll America, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is intended to assist HHS in publicizing, promoting, and implementing Obamacare through social media and door-to-door campaigns.

As HHS secretary, Sebelius has contacted firms such as Johnson & Johnson, Kaiser Permanente, Ascension Healthcare, H&R Block, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about supporting Enroll America, including with financial contributions.
Sebelius’ case is especially troubling because her department holds immense power over these potential partners. Johnson & Johnson (the world’s largest healthcare products manufacturer), Kaiser Permanente (an insurance company), and Ascension Healthcare (a hospital network) all fall under HHS’ huge regulatory umbrella, so Sebelius has the power to greatly influence each of their futures.
It’s a clear-cut conflict of interest for Sebelius to lobby these entities when she holds such regulatory power over them. By declining to lend a hand to Enroll America, healthcare companies and nonprofits risk the wrath of a spurned HHS in an administration that hasn’t shied away from retaliation.
The invited entities have about as much “free choice” in the matter as Americans will under the new healthcare law.
That’s not to say, however, that many elements of the healthcare-industrial complex is skeptical of Obamacare. Despite its title - “The Affordable Care Act of 2010” - health insurance executives and pharmaceutical companies stand to gain the most from Obamacare and its individual mandate, which requires all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty.
With its 20,000 pages of regulations, Obamacare assumes participation by many players outside the federal bureaucracy, including state governments, the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the general public.
If health care power brokers don’t embrace the law, it could easily collapse on itself, a scenario that the law’s disastrous rollout has made uncomfortably possible for Sebelius and her colleagues in the Obama administration.
Obamacare implementation was famously described as a “train wreck” by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., one of the law’s key architects. Recent news that Obamacare has driven up premium costs by 41 percent in Ohio won’t help the effort, either.
Enroll America is the carrot Sebelius is dangling in front of the health industry. They’ve been left to their own devices to wonder what the stick may be.
It’s no wonder that Enroll America’s board of directors is a who’s who of healthcare executives and lobbyists. The eight-member board includes the chief lobbyists for insurance giants Kaiser Permanente and Blue Shield of California, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA (the largest generic drugmaker in the country), and three major hospital associations.
Benign as it may seem, Enroll America is a cartel of cronies, hand-selected by Sebelius. Thus far, she’s used her influence to coerce businesses into joining her unholy alliance of corporate lobbyists and federal bureaucrats.
So long as insurance and pharmaceutical companies play their part in the scheme, they’ll profit off the system, but the rest of us will be left with fewer choices and higher costs.



Erik Telford is vice president of strategic initiatives and outreach at the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
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Government Seeking Inclusion of ‘Social and Behavioral’ Data in Health Records

Experts worry about security, use of such information





Kathleen Sebelius / AP




BY: Elizabeth Harrington
September 13, 2013 3:30 pm
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to require health care providers to include “social and behavioral” data in Electronic Health Records (EHR) and to link patient’s records to public health departments, it was announced last week.
Health care experts say the proposal raises additional privacy concerns over Americans’ personal health information, on top of worries that the Obamacare “data hub” could lead to abuse by bureaucrats and identify theft.
The CMS currently covers 100 million people through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Hospital Insurance Program and is tasked with running Obamacare.
According to a solicitation posted by the Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 4, the CMS is commissioning the National Academy of Sciences to study how best to add social and behavioral factors to electronic health record reporting.
The agency said adding social and behavioral data to patients’ online records will improve health care.
“Increasing EHR adoption has the potential to improve health and health care quality,” the contract’s statement of work (SOW) reads. “Parallel advances in analytic tools applied to such records are fueling new approaches to discovering determinants of population health.”
The project sets out to identify “core data standards for behavioral and social determinants of health to be included in EHRs.”
Critics suggested this would create new bureaucracies and negatively impact health care.
“This sounds like an example of the federal government further intruding on the practice of medicine,” said Chris Jacobs, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
“It’s including more pay for performance requirements on physicians to collect all sorts of data in order to get government reimbursements,” he said.
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gave authority to the CMS to pay hospitals and doctors that make the switch to electronic health records, to “encourage widespread EHR adoption.”
Health care professionals who began participating in the program in 2011 or 2012 can receive up to $44,000 for using EHRs for Medicare and $63,750 for Medicaid over 5 and 6 years, respectively.
Though the program is “totally voluntary,” eligible professionals who are not using EHRs by 2015 will see a 1 percent reduction in their Medicare and Medicaid fees each year.
Jacobs says the government’s “pay for conformance” culture in health care is “telling doctors what they have to do and how they have to do it in order to receive government reimbursement.”
The “meaningful use” program already requires doctors and hospitals to report the demographics of a patient and if he smokes to qualify for its first step. The second stage, planned for 2014, will require recording a patient’s family health history.
The National Academy of Sciences will make recommendations for adding social and behavioral data for stage three, which will be unveiled in 2016.
A spokesman for the CMS told the Washington Free Beacon that the agency is in the early stages of crafting the requirements for this stage.
“While we know that they are considering [clinical quality measures], it would allow a greater variety of specialties and procedures to be included,” said Tony Salters, a spokesman for CMS. “This includes items like behavioral health, dental care, drug, and alcohol use, etc.”
The CMS issued a “sole source” contract to the National Academy of Sciences because of “its caliber and expertise in the medical profession,” they said.
A spokeswoman for the National Academy of Sciences told the Free Beacon that the study began on July 15.
Working with the Institute of Medicine, a committee is currently drafting suggestions for collecting social and behavioral data.
The committee will “identify core social and behavioral domains to be included in all EHRs,” the organization said.
Not only will the committee come up with what behavioral data will be collected, they will also suggest how that data can be shared with public health departments.
The contract orders the committee to identify, “Possibilities for linking EHRs to public health departments, social service agencies, or other relevant non-health care organizations and case studies, if possible, of where this has been done and how issues of privacy have been addressed.”
The committee will also look at the “obstacles” to collecting social data for EHRs, and “how these obstacles can be overcome.”
Jacobs said the study is troubling in light of security issues with the Obamacare “data hub,” which will collect Social Security numbers and personal information to verify participation in the health insurance marketplace, beginning on Oct. 1.
“We’ve already seen with the Obamacare data hub and the significant delays that have been associated with it,” he said. “Government auditors have raised concerns about maintaining timelines and implementation and whether the data hub can be implemented in a secure manner that ensures Americans’ medical and financial records aren’t at risk.”
Others have warned that the database is vulnerable to abuse by the numerous government agencies involved, including the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, state Medicaid databases, and the Social Security Administration.
The potential for social and behavioral data to be shared with government agencies is only more worrisome, Jacobs said.
“This study raises additional questions about the privacy and security implications of the federal government sharing personal health data with other organizations and entities,” he said.

http://freebeacon.com/government-see...ealth-records/



Interesting don't ya think all this while they exclude themselves!!!!!!

Obama Wants Your Sexual History: Let the Data Collection Begin...





If you think the Obama health law is only for the uninsured and you won’t be affected, you’re in for a surprise next time you go to the doctor. Be prepared for questions unrelated to why you are seeking medical help — questions that you don’t want to answer.
Whether you’re at the dermatologist or the cardiologist, you’ll likely be asked: “Are you sexually active? If so, do you have one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?”
Doctors are being turned into government agents, where they’re pressured financially to ask questions they consider inappropriate and unnecessary and violate their Hippocratic Oath to keep patients’ records confidential.
Going to the doctor can be embarrassing. But for your own good, you confide in your doctor, as you wouldn’t anyone else. What is happening here is different.
“This is nasty business,” says Dr. Adam Budzikowski, a New York cardiologist, who called the sex question “insensitive, stupid and very intrusive.” He could not think of an occasion when a cardiologist would need such information.
Doctors and hospitals who don’t comply with the federal government’s electronic health records requirements forego incentive payments now and face financial penalties from Medicare and Medicaid starting in 2015. The Department of Health and Human Services has already paid out over $12.7 billion in incentives to doctors and hospitals.


http://bighealthreport.com/9636/obama-wants-your-sexual-history-let-the-data-collection-begin/


Post Continues on www.humanevents.com


Well let the questions begin I refuse to answer them , and will let them know just that. They tried that last year and I told them what I thought of those so called questions, and that it was none of their business!!!! Hmmm maybe next time I will say " I will consider telling you if you tell me"!!!!


One person on humanevents posted this for use as well, I really like it!!!!!

Here is the standard response - feel free to use it, males and females: " yes, I am sexually active with multiple partners - Obama screws me day in and day out, as does most of congress."

posted on September 12, 2013
White House: 'We Will Not Accept Anything That Delays or Defunds Obamacare'


The White House says it’s up to Congress to avoid a government shutdown because the administration “will not accept anything that delays or defunds Obamacare.”“Our position is, obviously, is that we will not accept anything that delays or defunds Obamacare,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney said at a press briefing Wednesday. “Threatening a government shutdown over an ideological position is not something most Americans would believe is the right thing to do.”
While the White House is willing to reject a measure that defunds Obamacare if it receives one, its view is that a shutdown would be the fault of Congress.
“Our view is Congress needs to act to avoid a shutdown,” Carney said. “Washington should not engage in activity that creates more self-inflicted wounds on the economy and a shutdown would do just that.”


Post Continues on cnsnews.com

http://bighealthreport.com/9632/whit...nds-obamacare/

Thursday, 12 September 2013 15:54 House GOP Leadership Thwarted by Tea Party Conservatives over Defunding ObamaCare

Written by Bob Adelmann







A vote on a bill to continue government spending after September 30 offered by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) scheduled for Thursday was abruptly cancelled when it was clear that it would fail. Called a “trick” by some Tea Party conservatives, “hocus-pocus” by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), and “chicanery” by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Cantor’s bill clearly wouldn't draw the 218 votes necessary for passage. Especially since some 80 House members have signed a letter drafted by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) demanding that any bill offered defund major parts of ObamaCare outright, before the law takes effect on October 1.

Cantor’s bill linked a resolution that would defund ObamaCare with a bill that would keep the government running through the middle of December. The bill was designed so that the Senate would be forced to vote down the defunding of ObamaCare before voting for continued government spending. This was clearly an attempt to force those senators facing reelection in 2014 from states whose populace is opposed to ObamaCare to vote to keep the healthcare law alive, which could then be used as a hammer by Republicans in their attempt to regain control of the Senate.
It’s a risky move but it’s how sausage is made in Washington. Current funding for the government ends on September 30, and with the House scheduled to be in session for only five more working days before then, the clock is ticking and putting pressure on the GOP leadership to come up with something that Tea Party conservatives can live with. It’s going to be tight.
GOP leadership, perhaps best exemplified by long-term GOP standard bearer Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), is in a pickle: “I think it is going to be difficult if we can’t come to a consensus.… I don’t think anything is for sure right now.”
The leader of those opposing Cantor’s “trick” bill is Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who sees this as the last chance for the House to defund ObamaCare: “House Republicans should pass a continuing resolution (CR) that funds government in its entirety — except ObamaCare — and that explicitly prohibits spending any federal money, mandatory or discretionary, on ObamaCare.” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) agrees that now is the time:
I think that’s a risk you have to take. Any path forward, there’s [going to be] a political downside to it. We didn't come here to get re-elected and have safe political careers. We came here to get things done.
I think that what our base wants is [for] us to go ahead and have the fight over Obamacare, right here, right now.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) warned that having that fight right here, right now, could come back to haunt Republicans just as a similar fight in the mid-1990s did: “I think there’s a number of people [here] who don’t remember when the government shut down the last time. And who carried the burden of that? It was the Republicans.”
The Cruz “strategy,” if adopted by the House, would fund the government, except for ObamaCare. The Senate would then be forced either to vote it down, thus shutting down the government, or pass it and have it vetoed by President Obama. Cruz is hopeful that the “boomerang of blame” for shutting down the government would then be hung around the necks of the Democrats in the Senate and the White House.
All the risk isn't being borne by the House, however. As Nate Silver noted in the New York Times in July, control of the Senate by the Republicans following the 2014 mid-term election is a “toss-up,” with 21 of the 35 seats held by Democrats up for reelection. As Silver noted, the Republicans would need to turn only six of them red to regain control and “more opportunities could also come into play if the national environment becomes more favorable to Republicans (such as a further slide in Mr. Obama’s approval ratings).”
Since Silver wrote that in July, Obama’s approval ratings have in fact slipped severely, and if Cantor’s bill, or some iteration of it is passed by the House, this improves the chances for a Republican Senate takeover next year.
In the meantime, however, ObamaCare would be fully funded and the Tea Party conservatives would be blamed for caving in on a hot button issue that representatives were painfully reminded of during the summer break in noisy and boisterous town hall meetings attended by their constituents.
History is on the Republican side. No sitting president’s party has gained Senate seats in the midterm of his second term. In recent years the loss has averaged more than six seats, enough to return control to the Republicans.
Trying to meld all these factors into a pudding that Tea Party conservatives are willing to eat is going to be tricky. Some think the president is bluffing when he says he will veto any bill that comes to his desk that defunds his signature legislation, even if it means he’ll take the blame for any government shutdown. Others think the Tea Party conservatives will fold and go along with the establishment GOP House leadership. Or perhaps there will be found a middle ground that incorporates a solution to the “next big thing”: the debt ceiling which is expected to be hit by the middle of October.
Otto von Bismarck was right: “Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.”

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com


http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/pol...ding-obamacare