My dictionary defines the adjective totalitarian as “a government or state in which one political party or group maintains complete control under a dictatorship and bans all others.” A second definition is given as: “completely authoritarian, autocratic, dictatorial.” As a noun, a totalitarian is “a person who favors such a government or state.” So we are not quite there yet.
The above definition certainly describes the present communist Chinese government, the North Korean regime, the Iranian Islamic theocracy, the Saudi-Arabian government, the Cuban communist state, and other such governments in Asia and Africa.
But do we have persons in our government who favor a totalitarian system? Of course we do, and that is why they are so eagerly and with all the power at their command trying to force the American people to accept a key element of a totalitarian system: universal health care.
In this day and age of high-tech data processing, it is now possible for our government to create dossiers for every person in the United States via the computer. Under national health care, every human being in the country will be registered in that data-gathering system, and the data collected can and will no doubt be used to control your life.
A model for that kind of a system has already been developed by Washington bureaucrats and is now in place in our nationalized education system. You can actually get copies of this data-gathering program, which consists of two publications: “Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education” (NCES 94-303), released in June 1994, and the “Staff Data Handbook: Elementary, Secondary and Early Childhood Education” (NCES 95-327) released in January 1995.
Both handbooks were produced under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and the National Center for Educational Statistics. The foreword for the “Student Data Handbook” states that the system “is a major effort to establish current and consistent terms, definitions and classified information about students.”
This system has actually been in development since 1974, and has been periodically expanded to include more and more data. The handbook states: “Accurate and comprehensive information is needed in order to make appropriate cost-effective and timely decisions about students within both public and private schools.”
Substitute the word patient for student and hospitals for schools and you have converted the education data-gathering system into a national health care system. The totalitarians in our Washington bureaucracy have already done the job. Note that the justification for all of this is so that bureaucrats can make “cost-effective and timely decisions about students (patients).” There is always a rational pretext for imposing more and more controls over a citizen’s life. In the case of national health care, the data will be needed so that decision-makers, whoever they may be, can decide what is best for you.
At present, all hospitals keep detailed computer files on all of their patients. So there is no need for a national data-gathering system on everyone in America on the pretext that everyone will need cost-effective national health care.
If the education data-gathering system is the model Obamacare will emulate, here’s the kind of data it will collect: detailed identification data, very specific religious affiliation, all past medical history, hospital records, medical test records, lifestyle records, bad habits records, eating habits, exercise habits, etc.
The “Student Data Handbook” places great emphasis on tests and assessments: achievement test, advanced placement test, aptitude test, attitudinal test, cognitive and perceptual skills test, developmental observation test, mental ability test, language proficiency test, manual dexterity test, personality test, psychomotor test, reading readiness test, psychological test. All of this information can easily be funneled into a national data system.
The handbook also includes a complete student medical file, which can be transferred to a national health care data system. It includes data on maternal and pre-natal condition, conditions at birth and health history, described as “A record of an individual’s afflictions, conditions, injuries, accidents, treatments and procedures.” That will include anyone with dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, reading disability, etc.
We are being told by our would-be masters in Washington that all of this is needed so government servants can better serve us at lower cost. Has all of the data gathered by the educators improved public education? The fact is that it has done just the opposite. One thing is certain: If the American people want to stop this Obama overdrive toward totalitarianism, they’d better kill this horrible national health care scheme before it even gets off the ground.