It gets better; by the time it’s all said and done—in about four more years according to government estimates—American taxpayers will have been fleeced $6.6 billion! It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system. The idea behind this plan is to switch medical records from paper to digital to create a centralized system that supposedly improves the quality of health care.

The overhaul won’t come cheap and the government is offering hospitals and doctors billions to switch to electronic medical records. The money has come largely from President Obama’s fraud-infested $787 billion stimulus which was supposed to jump start the economy and put Americans back to work. Instead the economy is a disaster as the nation suffers through a staggering $16 trillion (and growing) deficit and unemployment is at record highs.

This has not affected the cash flow to government programs, however. In this case the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is the agency that cuts the checks to healthcare providers that agree to switch to electronic records. So far CMS has doled out $3.6 billion to 74,317 medical providers, but the agency doesn’t bother following up to assure the money is appropriately spent. In fact, CMS fails to verify if providers are meeting the required quality goals, according to a federal audit released this week.

Investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General warn in their report that the electronic records program is vulnerable to abuse. Furthermore, they say immediate efforts should be made to strengthen oversight and prevent tax dollars from being wasted. This is not an unreasonable request considering doctors receive up to $44,000 and hospitals a minimum of $ 2 million to switch from paper to digital records.  

Here is the scary response, included in the HHS watchdog report, from the head of the CMS (Marilyn Tavenner) on the idea of requiring healthcare providers to prove they’re meeting quality requirements before they get U.S. tax dollars. It would be burdensome, Tavenner said, and it would “significantly delay payments.” Spoken like at true government bureaucrat!

This isn’t the first time that the Obamacare-driven digital medical record overhaul has come under fire. Last month federal lawmakers questioned the costly experiment, asserting that it’s wasting billions of tax dollars and doing little to improve medical care. In a letter to Obama Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, four congressmen who chair various committees say the program “appears to be doing more harm than good.”

As proof their letter includes an excerpt from a mainstream newspaper article that exposes this enraging bit of info; the move to electronic health records may be contributing to billions of dollars in higher costs for Medicare, private insurers and patients by making it easier for hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care.       

It’s one of many powerful arguments for opposing the president’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system. Officially known as the Affordable Care Act, a seldom-mentioned provision of the measure is dedicated to reducing health disparities between minorities and whites. More than $100 million has already been dedicated to the initiative to help lower chronic diseases “disproportionately seen among poor and minority populations.”

To carry out the mission, Obamacare established half a dozen federal Offices of Minority Health as well as one for each state. The federal minority offices are embedded in the following agencies; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS); the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA); and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). 

Each federal office will coordinate activities and programs that improve the health of racial and ethnic minority populations. For instance the CDC’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity will “advance the science and practice of health equity” and “collaborate with national and global partners to promote the reduction of health inequalities.” The FDA’s branch will “promote effective communication” among “underserved, vulnerable populations” and strengthen research associated with “race and ethnicity.”  

All 50 state “health equity” branches will work to “empower people” and “mobilize community partnerships” to end disparities. They will form a movement, a call to action if you will, at the regional, state, county and city level to achieve health equity. This includes encouraging elementary and high school students to organize special health equity events on campuses across the nation.  

In the name of this cause, the Obama Administration has coined April National Minority Health Month because “health equity can’t wait.” The idea is to raise awareness of the health disparities that continue to affect racial and ethnic minorities, according to a government press release, and to celebrate the opportunities of Obamacare’s “groundbreaking policies to reduce those health disparities.” 

Despite the progress our nation has made over the past 50 years, racial and ethnic minorities still lag behind the general population on many health fronts, the announcement says.  Minorities are less likely to get the preventive care they need to stay healthy, more likely to suffer from serious illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease and colon cancer, and they are less likely to have access to quality health care.

This is crazy; a semi-secret tax so the feds have cash to pay bureaucrats to examine everyone’s health records and, in turn, the government can save money by cutting back on care. The official plan, as noted by a national news wire this week, is to conduct research to find out which drugs, medical procedures, tests and treatments work best. It’s part of a “little-known provision” of the president’s socialist takeover of the nation’s healthcare system.

Who will conduct this valuable research? A new quasi-governmental agency (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute or PCORI) created by Obamacare to provide information about the “best available evidence to help patients and their health care providers make more informed decisions.” PCORI claims its research is intended to give patients a better understanding of the prevention, treatment and care options available.   

To conduct this valuable work, PCORI needs cash. That’s where the new, little-known tax kicks in. Beginning in 2012, Uncle Sam will charge insurance companies a new fee to fund the PCORI’s research. The tax will be $1 per person in 2012 and will double in 2013 and increase with inflation in the following years. Insurers will soon receive guidance on the new tax from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Obama has already given this sort of medical effectiveness research a big chunk of change. In fact, his disastrous 2009 economic stimulus bill included more than $1 billion for this kind of work through a different government agency. When his Affordable Care Act passed, the newly created PCORI became the official center to find ways to more “effectively and appropriately” prevent, diagnose, treat, monitor and manage health conditions.

Most Americans are opposed to Obama’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system and two separate federal courts—in Florida and Virginia—have ruled it unconstitutional. The Virginia ruling came in 2010 and the Florida decision, referred to as “another legal blow” by a mainstream newspaper, came last year. Here is the 2010 Virginia decision and the 2011 Florida ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case next March.

Judicial Watch has been a leader in comprehensively investigating Obamacare and has uncovered details related to secret healthcare meetings between powerful unions and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, waivers to companies and unions exempting them from inconvenient provisions of the new law and the regulation and funding of Obamacare in general. Read about JW’s Obamacare work here.  

Judicial Watch has also obtained internal Justice Department documents that suggest Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan helped coordinate the Obama Administration’s legal defense of the healthcare law while she served as Solicitor General. JW has long believed that Kagan could be Obama’s political operative on the Supreme Court. After all, she is a liberal activist with a thin resume, little legal experience and no judicial experience.