“Pro-lifers” eager to get mitts on electronic medical records

Doesn’t it seem like conservatives are awfully eager to implement that whole “let’s make everyone’s medical records electronic” concept? I mean, Democrats love to talk about health care. Republicans are always shamefully absent on the issue, but one thing I noticed that happened all through the general election was that every time the subject of healthcare came up, the conservative would always LEAP at the opportunity to pitch the idea of making a nation’s worth of medical records electronic and available by network. And, I know from many years of practice and observation, whenever conservatives want any thing that badly, that has to be something to it. There has to be an ulterior motive.

It didn’t take long for those thoughts to simmer in my mind for me to cook up a conspiracy theory. I don’t think it’s all that far fetched.

Please indulge me.

If the anti-choice movement wants to, not outright ban abortion, but continue with their current tactic of chipping away at women’s’ freedom and privacy with laws like requiring parental notification, placing limits on terms during which a medical procedure can be performed, requiring ultra-sounds, and any number of other tactics that places a watchful eye between a woman and her doctor, they’re going to need access to that which they don’t have now. I’m talking about anti-choicers, or at least their enforcers – perhaps the courts – having access to people’s personal medical records.

It takes no large amount of science fiction or imagination to know how they can be used. Computers can, and do, very easily ‘flag’ certain activities and then provide information in a report. I have a credit card that has a pretty good anti-fraud feature on it. If I’m ever in another state or country and whip out the card to pay for a bed and breakfast or something, my credit card company will phone me to let me know it was used in a suspicious or unusual way and ask me if it was me. It’s a little creepy but I tolerate it because of the protection it offers.

How easy would it be for a pregnancy, or even a test for pregnancy, to raise a flag to some kind of monitoring agency which was permitted by some future law to do so?

Imagine, “pregnancy” + “teen” = letter mailed to parents.
Pregnancy + a certain amount of time passed = the police showing up if no delivery is recorded in records

Is the imagination running? Yeah, mine too.

Sadly, Democrats like Barack Obama lack the imagination to be suspicious of these motivations and support this technological [ahem] achievement.

Let’s keep ‘em paper and on our doctor’s shelf. (After all, look what happened when we got rid of our paper ballots and went to electronic voting – some of us art still trying to stuff that genie back into the bottle!)

Oh, and if you were a conservative wanting to put this new, potentially invasive, abortion-fighting technology on the fast-track and implement it like now, who would you get to do it?

Wal-Mart Stores is striding into the market for electronic health records, seeking to bring the technology into the mainstream for physicians in small offices, where most of America’s doctors practice medicine.”

Who else, but Walmart!