We noticed this “easter egg” in the health care bill when it happened, so did Politico. But the Washington Post is just now getting around to noticing. Harry Reid, who <sarcasm>was of course not worthy of an NRA endorsement</sarcasm>, got that put in there for us. The provision prevents the federal government from using doctors to create a database of gun owners. More broadly, it seems to prohibit the inclusion of information about gun ownership in medical records at all.
Hey, if you’re going to force government health care down our throats, everything becomes political. And I think a requirement like that is on better First Amendment grounds than the bill that gagged doctors from talking about gun ownership at all. The WaPo, however, is pretty obviously doing it’s part to try to discredit the NRA. But consider that this was sent by a reader who though this was a good catch on NRA’s part.
We have the pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it. I love those Pelosi gems. We’re going to being finding these things for years to come.
Whatever the bill says, this is not how it is being enforced. My father is a doctor and the office he works for was scolded for leaving the gun ownership section in their medical records blank. They mostly handle Medicare and Medicaid patients, and they were told that this was Required by federal law.
Who is “they”. CMS?
To avoid repercussions for him I won’t name the group, but it’s a Tennessee group that handles lots of TennCare and other low income patients. He just writes in no on the firearms questions and doesn’t bother the patients with them.
The Board of the group was the entity that delivered the proclamation from on high that they needed to star filling in the firearms section. According to the Board, it was a requirement of the Healthcare Law. Could be that they were lying, or that they were told this by insurance companies or the government. One way or another, somebody is ignoring the law. Figuring out who, and at what level it starts, has been much harder.
I would expect somewhere below the level of the government. E.g. looking at the new Obamacare annual health history etc. visit, I’ve found sample questionnaires from a relevant organization that fulfilled all the requirements I could independently find but didn’t ask any unreasonable questions, including any about guns.
If there was some order coming down from on high requiring gun questions, I’d expect them to have been on those forms … and I’d expect we’d have heard about it, you can’t hide something like this if it gets too big, if too many people know about it.
YAY, Harry reid!!!!!
Okay, well let’s comprise and repeal it… :)
If asked about gun ownership…lie. Period.
Even if there is no coded data for your response, if the HCP puts it in their EMR notes field, it is searchable and can be found.
Imagine either being denied care or having required “treatments” for your firearm addiction. How about piss-poor Kellerman-style studies that are derived from your data. Give them nothing.