The Obama printing-press stimulus bill, which would be bad enough if it merely wasted money on pork projects, is actually much worse. It also creates more federal bureaucracies to further entangle Leviathan with the health-care industry and further restrict liberty in that already highly restricted sector.

For example, it would create a federal database of every American’s medical history.

It would institute a “National Coordinator of Health Information Technology [to] monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and ‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions . . . . These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what [former Senator and former nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom] Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, ‘Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.’ According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and ‘learn to operate less like solo practitioners.’”“Hospitals and doctors that are not ‘meaningful users’ of the new system will face penalties. ‘Meaningful user’ isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose ‘more stringent measures of meaningful use over time’”

The bill also creates “the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research . . . . The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept ‘hopeless diagnoses’ and ‘forgo experimental treatments,’ and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.”

Yes, folks, our wannabe Health and Human Services secretary admits that he wants to stifle innovation and cause more premature deaths–and yet he is praised for his “compassion” while free-marketeers are treated as villains! It’s enough to make you sick. Just be glad you can still get the treatment you need for a little while longer.

(Links via Drudge.)