The New England Journal of Mediocrity

Today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (more accurately, the New England Journal of Mediocrity) contains an article by Robert Steinbrook, MD, entitled Health Care and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

In summary, this article is nothing more than a propaganda piece for the Obama Administration's planned socialization of the American health care system. Excerpts from several paragraphs will illustrate the degree of federal a**-kissing to which the academic medical community has stooped (with parenthetical comments by your humble correspondent).

"On February 17, 2009, four weeks after his inauguration, President Barack Obama signed into law a $787 billion economic stimulus package (which was prepared by an unorganized mob still recovering from hangovers acquired in the President's $150 million+ inaugural party). The economic impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as the measure is officially known (at least while the politicians aren't laughing hysterically),will not be apparent for months (or years, if ever). Nonetheless, the bill's approval- even before any new senior officials of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) were in place (They're going to spend all this money without senior management oversight?) - has jump-started (evaded public comment and debate) the Obama administration's plans for (socialization of) health care.^"

"By launching broad federal initiatives for biomedical and comparative effectiveness research ... the stimulus law should have major and immediate effects (such as bankrupting the treasury). It directs to health care about $150 billion in new funds, most of which will be spent within 2 years (wow! how much will it cost in Year 3?). The spending includes $87 billion for Medicaid, $24.7 billion to subsidize private health insurance (so much for going after those greedy insurance companies) for people who lose or have lost their jobs ... and $10billion for the National Institutes of Health (I complained about that waste of time and money yesterday). The new NIH funding, equivalent to a third of the institutes' $29.5billion annual budget, was added at the insistence of Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), a strong supporter of the agency... (Specter, before he became the senior influence peddler from Pennsylvania, was a counsel to the 1964-65 Warren Commission and has frequently taken credit for creating the famous "Single Bullet Theory," which, prior to the passage of the Obama Economic Enema Plan, was the greatest hoax to have ever been perpetrated on the American public)."

Then there is this revelation:

"Although the federal government has long spent billions on health care (and wasted billions more), there is no precedent for the act's massive investment in accelerating the adoption of health information technology- or for the expanded leadership role (control) that government will assume in this arena. At present, perhaps only 17% of U.S.physicians and 8 to 10% of U.S. hospitals have at least a basic electronic health record system (that the government can monitor by computer). Far fewer have - and routinely use - the types of comprehensive systems that would allow them to fully realize the potential of the technology (because the existing software, to put it mildly, sucks).However, such technology will lead to improvements in the quality of care and savings on other health care costs (thanks to the same sloppy accounting and auditing practices that almost wrecked the economy) only if the implementation is done right (meaning to government standards, which will practically guarantee that the required software won't work)."

And finally:

"After he was named the White House chief of staff in November,Rahm Emanuel remarked, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" (there's nothing better than a "crisis" for the government to scare the citizens into giving up more of their supposedly-guaranteed rights). Clearly, the economic crisis has allowed the Obama administration to undertake far-reaching health care initiatives that it could not otherwise have launched quickly, if at all (it takes a university degree to figure that out?).The government will now have to determine how to spend the money promptly - and wisely (are you kidding? That's an insult to our intelligence).

Oh, and before I forget: the author of this article is Robert Steinbrook, MD, who happens to be an Adjunct Associate Professor of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School (which, although the exact amount is impossible to determine from online sources, receives several million a year in NIH-related grants and funding which does not include the amount it receives in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. I'm sure there is no suggestion that Dr. Steinbrook might be trying to loosen the federal pocketbook just a little more with his article).

And, in a matter unrelated to today's topic, I have been assured by a reliable, and reasonably sober, source that the Obama Administration has no plan in the works to change the national motto from E Pluribus Unum to Bend Over Taxpayers, Here It Comes Again.