An answer for President Obama

President Barack Obama was in Elkhart, Indiana, Monday to promote the stimulus package legislation that's hanging by a thread on Capitol Hill.

He told a town hall meeting that critics complain he's "trying to make policy instead of just doing short-term stimulus." Why not, he asked rhetorically, why not spend the money, if you're going to spend the money, on "long-term investments" that "create a better economic future," such as his proposal to "put everybody's medical records in a computerized form that will reduce medical errors and cut down the cost of health care over the long term."

The president doesn't come to us for advice -- at least, we're pretty sure he doesn't -- but here's the answer to his question.

The stimulus package is being rushed through Congress on the claim of an economic emergency. It's very unsettling to have it loaded up with provisions that make enormous, possibly controversial, possibly disastrous changes to something as important as health care records.

Before a major change like that is forced on the country, the American people are entitled to the full legislative process. Hearings. Debate. A roll call vote.

Politicians have been calling for computerizing health care records for some time. We can recall a newsmaking joint appearance by Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton, both of them smiling like toothpaste models and calling for everybody's health care records to be computerized.

Someone must be donating a lot of money.

But regardless of the motives behind all these proposals for computerizing health care records, there are a few questions that need careful consideration.

What are the implications for medical privacy? What are the safeguards to prevent cross-country, or cross-border, file-snooping?

Will there be security encryption to prevent hacking or accidental release of confidential medical records?

What makes anybody think people can't make mistakes with computers? (Did you know that Senator Ted Kennedy was hassled at airports for months because his name was similar to someone on the government's computerized no-fly list?)

Will individuals have access to their files to correct mistakes that might have a negative impact on employment?

How do we know that computerizing medical records won't turn out to be the expensive boondoggle that the FBI's two new computer systems became, or, for that matter, the huge waste of time and money spent on computerized voting machines, now collecting dust in state government warehouses?

Since there's no time to ask or answer questions, it might be best to keep the emergency legislation free of anything that raises too many of them.


Copyright 2009

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