The nanny state and the stimulus, together, that is, and we haven’t even getting into the more meddlesome points of Obamacare yet,
Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS (emphasis added)
New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms of the stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed last year–must record not only the traditional measures of height and weight, but also the Body Mass Index: a measure of obesity.
The obesity-rating regulation states that every American’s electronic health record must: “Calculate body mass index. Automatically calculate and display body mass index (BMI) based on a patient’s height and weight.”
The law also requires that these electronic health records be available–with appropriate security measures–on a national exchange.
And if your doctor doesn’t want to? They have to opt out of Medicare/Medicaid:
The new regulations are one of the first steps towards the government’s goal of universal adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) by 2014, as outlined in the 2009 economic stimulus law. Specifically, the regulations issued on Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, define the “meaningful use” of electronic records. Under the stimulus law, health care providers–including doctors and hospitals–must establish “meaningful use” of EHRs by 2014 in order to qualify for federal subsidies. After that, they will be subjected to penalties in the form of diminished Medicare and Medicaid payments for not establishing “meaningful use” of EHRs.
Darleen wants to know,
Could someone explain a “NON-meaningful use” of EHRs?
And, wait! As Darlene points out,
The CDC, which calls American society “obesogenic” – meaning that American society itself promotes obesity – collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesity nationwide.
Peachy.
Socialism is all about one thing: control. The ultimate control is over our stomachs. This is why Joseph Stalin used food as a weapon, confiscating enough to kill as many as 10 million in the Holodomor. Leftist icon Mao Zedong’s staggeringly incompetent totalitarian regime starved as many as 43 million more. Under the milder (although also economically devastating) socialist dictatorship of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the government began confiscating money from some to pay others not to plant crops. In over two centuries, the most crippling blow ever inflicted on our Constitution by the statist thugs it was written to protect us against was when the 10th Amendment was effectively repealed by FDR’s stooges on the Supreme Court in the Wickard v. Filburn case, which determined that the Commerce Clause enables the federal government to dictate what food you can grow on your own land for your own consumption.
This BMI maneuver is just another instance through which the Obama administration is set on transforming America to its statist, government-controlled “ideal” image.
Change. What a concept.
