‘Fred’ is unreliable

Dear Editor,

Ray Hornung writes in his Aug. 13 letter that he has concerns about proposed health care reforms coming out of the House of Representatives and wants to present facts about the plan from someone named “Fred.”

The article cites specific topics of concern from the proposed bill’s website (www.scribd.com/doc/17352956/House-Health-Reform-Bill).

“Fred” states he is concerned about the specific items found in the bill and cites page numbers for reference; however, there aren’t any direct quotations from the pages cited; there are only paraphrased interpretations of information from “Fred” containing such phrases as “…citizens will be ordered to…” and “…government given a new power to…”

After accessing the page numbers cited, I did not find Fred’s words “all American citizens will be ordered to have National ID Card. (p. 58).”

The actual words used in part D on page 58 are: “enable the real time (or near real time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service… including whether the individual is eligible for a specific physician at a specific facility, which may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card.”

Fred also states a concern about “the government to have immediate access to every American citizen’s bank account via electronic funds transfers (p. 59).” The only statement from the bill that corresponds to electronic access to private accounts on page 59 is found in part B that reads, “require paper versions of standardized transactions to comply with the same standards as to data content such that a fully compliant, equivalent electronic transaction can be populated from the data from a paper version.”

Finally, there are Fred’s statements: “all Americans ordered to give United States government power over living wills (p. 425)” and “…a new power to determine who and how their citizens die (p. 427).”

This extensive section on page 425 begins by explaining what an advance care planning consultation is and who is involved. Page 425 defines the consultation between the individual and practitioner as those who provide “an explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps and suggested people to talk to.”

People concerned about health care reform topics would be best served to consult the website for actual wording and intent, and if there are questions, they should contact their representatives to clarify what this bill really means before relying on an unknown source named “Fred.”

Tags: health care reform, opinion, letters