Nov. 17, 2009

As I have written about in a previous article entitled "Stop the Swine Whine," the public health establishment has used the current swine flu hysteria to try to impose mandatory vaccination laws under the guise of a health crisis. Fortunately, these proposed laws, with the exception of New York's short-lived mandatory health care worker vaccination mandate, have yet to come to fruition. In the case of New York some courageous doctors and nurses filed suit against the dictatorial law and were successful in getting the state government to back down.

While the constitutional crisis that this represented has been temporarily averted, a dangerous precedent has been set. It may be that in the coming months and years that these same government officials will not so easily relent. It may be as soon as the next flu season or the passage of the Obamacare health bill that our medical rights are lost forever.

We may have been granted a temporary reprieve from forced medical treatments this time around, but have we been spared from the government? As usual, the answer is "no". While the government may not be forcing a medicine down our throats or corralling uncooperative people in camps, what they are doing should send shivers down our collective spine. They are creating lists of dissidents and "terrorists". These lists contain detailed information on individuals. And, if ever the laws were changed to permit more coercive action instead of passive data collection then the government would already have the names of the supposed "enemies of the state" on hand.

What evidence of these government lists exists? Most people are aware of the government "no-fly" list, which now includes more than a million possible "terrorist" individuals. Additionally, there are government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that are creating lists of supposed "domestic terrorists" including Ron Paul supporters, constitutionalists, Federal Reserve skeptics, military veterans, and many more as detailed in the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) and DHS rightwing extremism reports. More recently, the Obama Whitehouse has created its own enemies list composed of individuals that are opponents to Obama's socialist agenda.

There is also a group of people that range from the upper middle class to the wealthy that are frequently portrayed as "economic terrorists" by the IRS and the media. These people are often depicted as evil, selfish individuals that only acquired their living by parasitically draining it from the public. While there are indeed some individuals that fit this depiction, the vast majority are hard-working, innovative individuals who have accumulated wealth by their own efforts. Unfortunately, the media likes to lump these common Americans in with the likes of Bernie Madoff, who swindled investors out of billions of dollars, thus further engendering the false stereotype of wealthy people as being synonymous with corrupt greedy hucksters. This media and government propaganda garners increased support for forced confiscation of wealth as long as Robin Hood's (or rather the Federal Government's) loot is redistributed to those that have been supposedly wronged. Thus the government bribes one group of people, through promised welfare, unemployment, and medical benefits, to support increased IRS efforts to rob the savings from another smaller, but wealthier, group of Americans.

Although most of you are probably familiar with some of these government lists, many are not aware of the latest and potentially most dangerous data collection effort. Not only is the government seeking to monitor foreign, domestic, and economic terrorists but you can now add medical dissidents to the list. These dissidents include people that don't take the prescribed government treatments, physicians who don't follow the government protocols, and those that openly oppose any government medical measure. Traditionally, these medical dissidents could be found among the lists of conscientious objectors who refused to vaccinate their children as a prerequisite for public school enrollment. But the conscientious objectors are only the beginning.

Unbeknownst to most people that have received the H1N1 flu vaccine, they not only got a painful shot in the arm but also may have suffered a shot to their liberty. For example, as part of getting the vaccination in Texas, people are provided information about the H1N1 swine flu from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). While the information in the packet all seems innocent the catch comes at the end when patients are required to sign a consent to have their name entered into a government database for at least five years, if not forever.

The reason for this extraordinary period of retention seems to be that the H1N1 flu epidemic has been termed a disaster. In fact, the consent section starts with the title "Consent for retention of Disaster-Related Information and Release of Information to Authorized Entities." Furthermore, as part of the consent patients agree to grant "retention of my (or my child's) disaster-related information by DSHS beyond the 5 year retention period." This information will be stored in "the states central immunization registry ('ImmTrac')" and used for "coordinating communicable disease prevention and control efforts."

The "disaster" justification for encroaching upon our constitutional rights is nothing new. What is new is that this "disaster" has now been exposed as at most over-blown and at worst a fraud. While many experts were predicting up to hundreds of thousands of deaths in both the UK and the U.S., the reality has been that only a few hundred have unfortunately succumbed to the "swine" flu. In addition, over the past few weeks there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of swine flu cases. It is likely that this "disaster" may be already over. Unfortunately, for the poor unsuspecting public the end of their liberty has only just begun.

What will the government do with all this information?

Because this virus has been relatively mild and vaccine compliance has been so low, the government is not likely to gain much epidemiological information. However, despite the fact that the government will glean very little information about the effects of the vaccine, this will not prevent it from monitoring those that are vaccine compliant and vaccine non-compliant. It is this list of vaccine non-compliant people that I fear will be the focus of future government pandemic vaccine intervention.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't stop with vaccinations. Ever since the federal government began to tie reimbursement rates of hospitals with preventative medicine or "best practice" measures has come the potential for non-compliance lists of unheard proportions. It all started with Medicare mandating that hospitals "voluntarily" push pneumococcal, tetanus, and flu vaccinations on their patients or else face financial penalties. It didn't matter if the patient came in for a broken leg, he or she would have a vaccine pushed in their face largely because of the threat of federal financial disincentives. Now the Federal government is beginning to push best practice measures in other areas. These areas include government mandates about supposedly evidence-based best treatment protocols for conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia, heart failure, and many others. If hospitals and doctors don't follow the protocol, they face the prospect of future blacklisting and financial hardship from federal regulators and auditors.

If that isn't scary enough, soon these measures will affect your local primary care physician as they face the prospect of having their treatments and compliance/non-compliance to protocols for diabetes, heart failure, hypertension, and many other conditions monitored by federal auditors. In anticipation of this many large physician groups and hospital organizations are already putting this monitoring in place on their own physicians in order to help them be good little obedient physicians so that they will be prepared when the eventual mandates from government arrives.

What has made this sort of control possible is the advent of electronic medical records (EMR). With most EMR systems it is possible to data mine and extract patient non-compliance/compliance and monitor physician adherence to best-practice protocols for many conditions and preventative measures. For example, it is possible for these systems to monitor what percentage of a physician's patients are getting colonoscopies, flu vaccines, mammograms, etc. and with the percentage comes a list of compliant and non-compliant individuals. It is with these lists that non-compliant individuals are beginning to be hounded on a never-ending basis to comply or else. This is because physicians fear economic and even possible professional retribution from state medical boards and the government if their numbers aren't high enough.

The only saving grace right now is that the entire system is highly fragmented due to the large number of EMR systems. However, if a single-payer system becomes the dominant medical system under the current health care reform proposed by the Obama administration then it would be much easier for federal government to gather and monitor this information. It may be that soon both physicians and patients are put in medical straight-jackets where all the treatments are prescribed in advance and physicians become nothing more than desk-clerks, even more so than they already are. That is why it may be that the Obama administration is pushing EMR and why Medicare has threatened to start decreasing physician reimbursement for physicians that are not using these systems. It may have more to do with making sure that future government rationing, treatment protocols, physician compliance, and patient compliance can be strictly monitored than improving the quality of medical care.

Think that this kind monitoring could never happen in America? Well, you would be wrong. In January of 2006, New York City became the first city to require certain diabetes blood tests to be sent to the public health department where patient and physician compliance to diabetes treatment protocols are monitored. If the numbers are not good enough both the patient and physician are liable to be sent a report.

It is not too late to become anxiously engaged in fighting for your health care freedom. Just be aware that the next time you decide to be non-compliant to the treatment protocol that you may unwittingly have become part of a non-compliant list. As a member of the non-compliant list, physicians will be forced to continue to nag you on a seemingly never-ending basis until you become compliant. This is because they don't want their name to be published as a bad physician for not getting enough patients to comply nor do they want their livelihood and certification taken away.

If we are unsuccessful in turning the tide then this system of protocols, electronic medical records, and a single-payer system will inevitably be put in place. Your only hope may be to insist that your physician uses paper and not plastic.

Adam Murdock, MD, is a physician working in Texas. He is founder and editor of The Freemen Institute, a website dedicated to preserving the foundations of liberty.

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