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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 16 August 2001 | Vol. II, No. 68 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | 16 August 2001 | Vol. II, No. 68 | ||
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Eight years after then-President Bill Clinton's failed plan for putting the federal government in charge of health care, the foes of the ill-fated idea are trying to roll back a major feature of the Clinton plan that made it into the federal code - a health care identifying number to be assigned to all Americans.
The number was crucial to the Clinton plan of centralizing all individual health care information in a collective government database. In 1996, Congress helped that cause along through a provision in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act concerning patient privacy protections.
The law requires that unique health identifiers be assigned to every individual, health care provider, employer and health plan to make electronic transactions easier.
Though Congress has since denied funding for the part of the project dealing with individual identifiers, what worries Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and his allies is that the requirement is still on the books, so to speak.
"We think it's an invasion of privacy, and we think it's a number that's going to be abused like the Social Security number has been," said Paul's spokesman, Jeff Deist.
That's why Paul recently introduced a bill that would repeal parts of HIPAA calling for identifying numbers. It would also prevent federal tax dollars from being used to construct or maintain a federal health care database.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, recently said he would support an effort to repeal the provision this year. "I'm very worried about this," he said, "and we'll continue to work on that."
"But one of the things I've learned the hard way is don't predict what will be in the bill," Armey cautioned.
Paul fears that future Congresses may not be successful in staving off such a national ID system, so he wants to act now.
"We're just trying to proactively, before that happens, prohibit it," said Deist.
"It's been proposed by folks in both the Senate and the House in the past - 'Let's have a health ID number for everybody so that we can track and fight disease,'" he said. "We don't accept that explanation."
In fact, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is getting ready to introduce a bill that would do just that.
"Chronic disease is responsible for seven out of every ten deaths in the U.S. each year and costs our nation $325 billion in annual health care expenses and lost productivity," read a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated by Pelosi and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., this month.
"Despite these significant health risks, there is no national system that explores the relationship between chronic diseases and potentially associated environmental factors," Pelosi's letter continues.
** 'National Health Tracking System'
Her forthcoming bill would, according to the letter, create a "national health tracking system" to collect, analyze and report data on the rate of chronic disease along with the presence of certain environmental factors.
The bill would also "coordinate national, state and local efforts to bolster our public health system's capacity to investigate and respond" to health risks.
"I understand the good intentions, which are that a national database would absolutely improve access to information to treat you in emergency situations," said Sue Blevins, president of the nonprofit Institute for Health Freedom.
"But I still think it should be up to the individual to decide whether they want to be part of a government database," said Blevins, who believes the private sector should take up the idea voluntarily.
Like Paul, she fears that information in a centralized database would be wrongly accessed and used by computer hackers, profiteers and would-be blackmailers.
** Denial of Health Care
Blevins is also concerned that health care could be denied to patients who refuse to disclose their number, much the way financial and other services are sometimes denied to people who do not disclose their Social Security numbers.
"HIPAA and the privacy rule codify the fact that a physician can refuse to treat you for not sharing your information," she said. "That's written into the privacy rule. That has not been a federal standard" until now.
"Right now in the current Department of Health and Human Services appropriation bill, there's a proposal to penalize doctors and impose a $1.50 charge for every claim that's filed with the government that isn't processed electronically," Blevins added. "That's a way to move everybody into a national electronic system without mandating it."
The next step, she warned, could be a federal regulation that says, "if you don't have a unique health care identifier for your patient, you're not going to get Medicare reimbursement, or you can't qualify to get Blue Cross/Blue Shield reimbursement."
"It's hard to say," Blevins said, "because we don't know what the final compliance part of HIPAA looks like."
[ CNS ]
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning." --Frederick Douglass
"Illegal immigration, which erodes our identity, is a threat to America's survival. It's really not about who will be elected to govern the country in 2004, but whether, in the future, there will be any country left to govern." --Don Feder
"The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and tyrannies." --John Adams
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." -- Edward Abbey
"I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost." --Frederick Douglass
"...[T]he Democrats seem to define 'isolationism' as not allowing our domestic and international policy to be determined by the European Union or the United Nations." --Sterling Rome
"Globalization works for no one. Minimum belief in family, discipline and country represents the only basis for our future." --Niels de Groot
"No public-school system, which employs armed guards, barbed wire fences and metal detectors can be called even an acceptable system, much less successful." --Charley Reese
"Two-thirds to three-quarters of next year's $2 trillion federal budget represents legalized plunder, where Congress makes it possible for one American to live at the expense of another." --Walter Williams
"You don't have followers if you don't lead. You don't lead if you don't stand up for things worth standing up for." --John L. Perry
"Bipartisan reform commissions usually pair Democratic conmen with Republican chumps." --Don Feder
"Attack is something Republicans don't do well; they think politics should be a gentleman's game." --Lyn Nofziger
"If ignorance were the explanation, I'd be optimistic. I'd simply send the president, congressmen and Supreme Court justices James Madison's Federalist Paper No. 45, explaining the Constitution. After that, they'd mend their ways and eliminate most federal programs, state mandates and other gross constitutional violations." --Walter Williams
"There is no difference between an income tax and slavery. A slave does not own the fruits of his labor, and neither does anyone who is subject to income tax." --Paul Craig Roberts
"Religious believers do not drop their political opinions at the door of their place of worship, nor do they disregard their faith at the ballot box. Religious morality will always inform the voting choices of Americans of all faiths." --Rep. Ron Paul
House Republican leaders have told the White House that they intend to hold up payment of money the United States owes the United Nations unless the Bush administration agrees to legislation designed to undercut the International Criminal Court, administration officials said yesterday.
The administration wants Congress to release $582 million of back dues to the United Nations soon, to avoid embarrassment when President Bush addresses the U.N. General Assembly in late September. The money would cover the second and largest of three payments that Congress and the Clinton administration agreed on last year to pay off roughly a billion dollars in U.S. arrears.
But conservative lawmakers are threatening to hold up the money unless it is approved together with the American Service Members' Protection Act, which is aimed at exempting Americans from the International Criminal Court, a permanent tribunal being established in the Hague to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. During his last days in office, President Bill Clinton signed a treaty setting up the court, but it has little chance of ratification by the Senate.
The dispute threatens U.S. support for two international institutions just when the Bush administration is trying to convince the world that it is not pursuing a unilateral or isolationist approach to foreign affairs.
The American Service Members' Protection Act, which is attached to the House version of a State Department authorization bill that contains the U.N. money, would cut off U.S. military assistance to any non-NATO country that ratified the ICC treaty. It would also prohibit U.S. troops from serving in any U.N. peacekeeping forces unless the U.N. Security Council gives American soldiers immunity from ICC jurisdiction. And it would authorize the president to use military force to free U.S. or allied service members held by the court. As a result, the measure's critics, including members of Congress, human rights activists and experts on international law, have dubbed it "the Hague Invasion Act."
The Bush administration opposes the International Criminal Court and is considering how to "unsign" the treaty, which it also views as threatening to U.S. military personnel. But it does not want its hands tied by the anti-ICC legislation, which it believes would limit the president's ability to make foreign policy and could infuriate allies already angered by the Bush administration's aversion to treaties on the environment, nuclear arms, small arms and germ warfare.
The administration favors a Senate bill that would separate the U.N. arrears from the State Department authorization. But several powerful House members are balking at that solution, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), International Relations Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The American Service Members' Protection Act also has some Democratic backing; 76 Democrats joined the 282-137 majority that attached it as an amendment, offered by DeLay, to the State authorization bill.
As a result, administration officials have been negotiating with House Republican leaders -- especially Hyde -- on compromise language that would give the president greater leeway in deciding on military aid or U.S. troop commitments. So far, Hyde has been adamant.
"We are spending a lot of time trying to persuade people on the Hill to release that $582 million prior to the General Assembly," said a senior administration official who has been involved in some of the negotiations. "We do think that American service personnel will need some protection. So we're working . . . to see if we can get some modified language that we can all agree to. That would make this problem disappear. I'm an optimist because we're all going in the same direction."
However, time is short. Once Congress goes back into session on Sept. 5, the administration will have just three weeks before Bush's General Assembly speech. The Senate version of the State authorization bill, which does not include the anti-ICC amendment, was approved in committee but has not yet been voted on by the full chamber.
Administration officials said that the possibility of backing out of the ICC treaty isn't part of the negotiations with Congress, but that it is part of the backdrop. Legally, there is no such thing as "unsigning" a treaty, according to experts on international law. Though the ICC treaty has withdrawal provisions, the United States cannot withdraw yet because it has not ratified the document.
Moreover, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties says a country that has signed but not ratified a treaty "is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of" that accord. Some experts on international law say the American Service Members' Protection Act would do exactly that.
Although the United Nations sponsored the 1998 negotiations in Rome that set up the court, the international tribunal is not a U.N. organ. Still, the administration could send a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan notifying him that the United States has no intention of ratifying the treaty. Given the politics of the Senate, the senior administration official said, "such a letter would arguably just be stating the truth."
But so far, the official added, there has been no decision on that step.
Some experts argue that a letter undermining the court would also undermine U.S. interests. It would, for starters, remove the United States from further negotiations on how the court is to operate. Even Clinton, who reluctantly signed the ICC treaty, said the U.S. signature would better enable the United States to change the elements it does not like.
In addition, "there is a whole list of treaties we've ratified that other states have signed but not yet ratified," said David Scheffer, who headed the U.S. delegation to the talks on the International Criminal Court during the Clinton administration. "If we 'unsign' the ICC, we give a signal that a new practice is acceptable, and we lay the groundwork for undermining a whole range of treaties."
Michael Glennon, an international law expert at the University of California at Davis, noted that the American Service Members' Protection Act "bars any federal, state or local governmental entity from cooperating in any way with the court." That would prevent cooperation even if the ICC were to indict the likes of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"It might well be in our interest to provide documentary evidence to support that indictment," Glennon said. "We should make it easier, not harder, for other nations to investigate and arrest thugs who commit crimes against Americans."
Meanwhile, U.N. supporters rue the fact that overdue U.S. payments are again hostage to a political dispute. The deal forged last year by then-Ambassador to the United Nations Richard C. Holbrooke required the United Nations to change its formula for calculating U.S. dues.
House leaders also want the administration to support language that would make the third and final U.S. arrears payment next year dependent upon the reinstatement of the United States to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The United States failed this year -- for the first time since the United Nations' founding -- to win a spot on that commission.
[ Washington Post ]
Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that Bill and Hillary Clinton's responses to a lawsuit filed in California state court by Judicial Watch on behalf of a major Clinton and DNC donor Peter Paul conspicuously failed to include any denials of the lawsuits core allegations of the lawsuit:
* Mr. Paul paid the $2 million to the Clinton campaign as part of a $17 million offer to Bill Clinton to work with Mr. Paul's companies after he left the Oval Office. This contribution was never reported to the Federal Election Commission, and Mrs. Clinton and her campaign lied to the media about the contributions and Mr. Paul's funding of the gala tribute.
* Mr. Paul discussed a potential presidential pardon for prior felony convictions in return for his political contributions with then DNC Chairman Ed Rendell.
* The Clinton campaign knowingly allowed a foreign national to attend the "Hollywood Tribute" in exchange for a $27,000 contribution. This foreign national later attended the India State Dinner.
* Mr. and Mrs. Clinton made repeated calls to Mr. Paul to thank him for his financing of the Hollywood Tribute. Mr. Paul also had extensive discussions with Chelsea Clinton, Al Gore, and many Clinton aides and others regarding his funding of the Hollywood Tribute and his plans to work with Mr. Clinton after he left office.
Rather than submit declarations contesting the allegations, the Clintons, in pleadings filed August 14, chose to tell the court that the facts of the lawsuit should be assumed as true, yet the case should be dismissed anyway. This is a standard practice for motions to dismiss, which are what the Clintons are seeking. Interestingly, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton filed separate motions to dismiss with the court.
"Given the facts of the case, it speaks volumes that the Clintons have refused to go on the court record about Mr. Paul's claims. Generally, defendants submit declarations denying allegations in lawsuits such as this one, and seek summary judgment. This is especially true if the lawsuit's allegations concern criminal activity by the defendants. The fact that not one declaration was submitted disputing Mr. Paul's evidence shows how strong our case is against the grifting former First Couple," stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.
Mr. Paul has documentary evidence of his close relationship with the Clintons, including checks, thank you notes from the Clintons themselves, and candid video and photographs. Mr. Paul, who faces federal charges on alleged securities violations, is eager to cooperate with the U.S. Justice Department, so that all involved are brought to justice.
[ Judicial Watch ]
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