By: Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.

Subway riders know the adage – The third rail is deadly –it carries the current that can kill you. Avoid the third rail.

We are about to get that “third rail” for government-controlled healthcare. Then comes the death blow to your medical privacy, your freedom to choose medical treatment options, and your ability to control the cost of any private health insurance you may want to buy.

Democrats, working in the shadows away from public view and using devious “divide and conquer” strategies, have already laid two tracks for a complete government control of your healthcare. They only have one more rail to go.

The first two rails were craftily hidden in the Stimulus Bill of February 2009. While the public thinks healthcare bills are still “out there” and not yet passed, the Democrats have been celebrating the anniversary of the Stimulus Bill, knowing that their “Stimulus” stealth tactics already laid those first two healthcare tracks for government control.

Populist rhetoric hides the lethal third rail. It is called “insurance reform.”

It’s brilliantly deceptive and diabolical in its 3-step simplicity:

1. Control medical records and private health information of every person in the United States, and penalize health professionals who refuse to release your personal information. ALREADY PASSED into law February 2009. Come 2014, YOU no longer control YOUR medical records.

2. Control delivery of all health services under the guise of “comparative effectiveness research” and the “complete lives system” that decides a person’s value based on age. The federal health czar’s panel of bureaucrats and computers will decide whether or not you are “worth” the cost of treatment, and what treatment you will be approved to obtain. ALREADY PASSED into law February 2009.

3. The Missing Third Rail: Insurance “Reform.” Control of all private insurers in the country. The rhetoric goes this way: These “bad” insurance companies must be reined in. Government must protect people. Government will dictate what insurance plans must cover, what they cannot exclude. Government dictates mean dramatic prices increases if companies are forced to give up using their risk-based approach to underwriting, which helps keep premium costs down. Then the private insurance market collapses. We lose our freedom to choose our plan.

Once this third rail is in place, you will have lost all control of your healthcare. Done deal.

This third rail will kill private healthcare as we know it. This is the only remaining part of the massive Senate and House healthcare bills that the Democrats know is critical to get passed in order to achieve their goal on government control of your healthcare.

I think this is the next stealth strategy for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team: seduce you into thinking that insurance “reform” is actually going to protect you, and that’s “all” they really need to pass now. The protectionist subterfuge hides the dangers of the third rail shock until it is too late.

Charles Krauthammer wrote on January 15, 2010: “Then… the federal government will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, ObamaCare turns the health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move dictated by government regulators.” Federal bureaucrats will make decisions about your treatment, not your doctor or other health professional.

Members of the House and Senate who voted for the massive Stimulus Bill, without reading it, already put the federal government in control of your personal medical information. The Stimulus Bill already sold out your medical privacy. The Stimulus Bill already put the federal health czar in control of what treatment options you will be allowed to have.

The third rail, euphemistically called “insurance reform,” (really insurance controls) will deal the lethal blow to private health insurance. Laying the third rail trap, the politicians will rob you of your privacy, your medical treatment options, and now, your choice of how to pay for care.

This “third rail” must be stopped before the best medical care in the world is destroyed.

The problems we face in healthcare today are not caused by doctors, insurance companies, drug companies, or medical device makers. The problems we face are caused by politicians creating more and more big government regulation, more and more government intrusion into the patient-doctor relationship. Their solution is a political one, but it is not in patients’ best interests. We must get the politicians OUT of healthcare.

Ronald Reagan warned in 1961: “Socialism begins with government control of medicine.” Reagan also said, “Socialized medicine is always presented as a great emergency, and if you challenge it, you are attacked with accusations that you lack compassion.” This is exactly what we are hearing from progressive Democrats today.

Insurance controls become the third rail, a lethal assault on your Constitutionally guaranteed unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This third rail is the final shock that can kill you. Politicians cannot save you.

Doctors and patients across the country must join to stop this third rail. Then we have to start ripping up traps from the other two healthcare tracks they have laid.

DISCLAIMER: Dr. Vliet speaks as an independent physician, not as an official spokesperson for any organization. Dr. Vliet has no financial ties to any health care system, pharmaceutical company, or health insurance plan. Her allegiance and advocacy is to and for patients.

Sources:

1. Health Information Technology (HIT) “Strategic Plan” was set out in Part 3 of subsection ( c ) of the Stimulus Bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). See pages 442-446 of H.R. 1 EH pdf version online. Most in Congress did not read it before they voted to pass it.

2. The February 2009 Stimulus Bill set up the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (see pages 190-192 of H.R. 1 EH pdf version online).

3. Ronald Reagan in his own words discusses risks of socialized medicine: http://cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2009/02/ronald-reagan-1961-socialized-medicine.html)