Wouldn’t you be off put if your dermatologist asked, “How many sex partners do you currently have?” Well what if we told you that new Obamacare legislation would make these types of arbitrary questions mandatory, and necessary for all doctors to include within patient EMRs just so that practices weren’t fined? Okay, but the data will be safe within the patient EMR, right? Well, sure, maybe the government just checks to see if the box was filled out and doesn’t abuse their power. But even if kept “private” in the best case scenario, there’s a new problem — what if patients just lie in order to protect themselves, and their privacy? Well then we have a new problem, we’ve tied more of that red tape around doctors, getting them to do more tasks that accomplish nothing. This is the red tape we keep mentioning as one of many culprits contributing to expensive healthcare in America.
Yes, we’ve chosen to polarize the above assumptions to illustrate the potential setbacks of this type of legislative intrusion. Now say we take the middle ground and accept, okay, EMRs are secure and patients are honest. Why the heck does my dermatologist need to know how many people I slept with to treat an external skin condition?
READ BETSY McCAUGHEY’S STANCE ON OBAMACARE AND EMR REGULATION
Needless to say, she is opinionated, and a little assumptive. This can be a good thing, though, because we need investigative journalism to get to the bottom of what’s inside those thousands of pages of legislation. We’re guessing that as more of these line items are exposed McCaughhey will not be the only person yelling fire in this great big American healthcare theater.
