Another government intrusion of Obamacare revealed

Much has been written about H.R. 3200, the bill to nationalize health care, but most of the truth about it has only appeared on the internet and by some political commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck. As time goes on we find out more and more hidden in this House bill that boggles the mind.

We know about the creation of a panel of Washington bureaucrats to be formed to apply “cost effectiveness” when deciding what medical care may or may not be approved for individual patients but whose real purpose is to deny medical treatment to elderly to reduce costs. We also know about mandated health insurance coverage for all Americans while not increasing the supply of medical providers. But particularly insidious provisions have only now come to light.

Declan McCullagh (AP) has revealed that one of the problems with the proposed 1,000 page law to destroy health care for Americans is in Section 431(a) which says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and "other information as is prescribed by" regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for "affordability credits."

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details -- there's no specified limit on what's available or unavailable -- to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose purportedly is to verify "affordability credits."

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a "low-income prescription drug subsidy" but has not applied for it.

Tom Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation (a free-market think tank) asked "How many thousands of federal employees will have access to your records? The privacy of your health records will be only as good as the most nosy, most dishonest and most malcontented federal employee.... So say good-bye to privacy from the federal government. It was fun while it lasted for 233 years."

But the Obamacare bill is not the only intrusion on privacy; we already have something in place that came in under the radar with the stealth Stimulus bill. It mandated the "utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014," but included only limited privacy protections.

This is more of the “hope and change” Americans voted for; but I wonder if ceding their privacy for all eternity is what they had in mind.