The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

Provision to define quality in health care by government.

SEC. 1442. DEVELOPMENT OF NEW QUALITY MEASURES;
GAO EVALUATION OF DATA COLLECTION
PROCESS FOR QUALITY MEASUREMENT.
Part E of title XI of the Social Security Act, as added
by section 1441, is amended by adding at the end the fol-
lowing new sections:
S‘‘SEC. 1192. DEVELOPMENT OF NEW QUALITY MEASURES.
‘‘(a) AGREEMENTS WITH QUALIFIED ENTITIES.—
‘‘(1) INGENERAL.—The Secretary shall enter
into agreements with qualified entities to develop
quality measures for the delivery of health care serv-
ices in the United States.

From pages 621-622 of the Health care bill

Anybody ever visited a government-run hospital (Veterans, City-operated)?

“Amid growing controversy over procedures that exposed 10,000 veterans to the AIDS and hepatitis viruses, the Department of Veterans Affairs is now bracing against news that one of its facilities in Pennsylvania gave botched radiation treatments to nearly 100 cancer patients.

Veterans groups and lawmakers say VA hospitals have permitted these violations because federal regulations allow doctors to work with little outside scrutiny. They say the VA health system, with its under-funded hospitals and overworked doctors, is showing signs of an “institutional breakdown,” in the words of one congressman.

An official with the American Legion who visits and inspects VA health centers said complacency, poor funding and little oversight led to the violations that failed the cancer patients in Philadelphia and possibly infected 53 veterans with hepatitis and HIV from unsterilized equipment at three VA health centers in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia.” (more…)

Page 718

SEC. 1637. PHYSICIANS WHO ORDER DURABLE MEDICAL EQUIPMENT OR HOME HEALTH SERVICES REQUIRED TO BE MEDICARE ENROLLED PHYSICIANS OR ELIGIBLE PROFESSIONALS.

No need to explain this provision. Forcing doctors to enroll in Medicare under this stipulation is ridiculous.

Obama’s Euthanasia Mistake
by Lee Siegel

The Republicans carping about limitations on end-of-life care have a point. Lee Siegel on why the plans Obama is endorsing are dangerously sympathetic to “cost effective” end-of-life treatments.

For those of us who believe that the absence of universal health care is America’s burning shame, the spectacle of opposition to Obama’s health-care plan is Alice-in-Wonderland bewildering and also enraging—but on one point the plan’s critics are absolutely correct. One of the key ideas under consideration—which can be read as expressing sympathy for limitations on end-of-life care—is morally revolting. And it’s helping to kill the plan itself.

Make no mistake about it. Determining which treatments are “cost effective” at the end of a person’s life and which are not is one of Obama’s priorities. It’s one of the principal ways he counts on saving money and making universal healthcare affordable. (more…)

Now I’m not with Siegel with the “America’s burning shame” bit (read about how these ObamaCare clones are doing right here in the US), but he also notices how end-of-life care will be left up to policy in this bill (I talked the other day about how Ezekiel J. Emanuel [one of Obama's health care advisers] has been a proponent of euthanasia for years).

Duke University professor John Lewis PH.D is another individual that has been looking closely at this bill.