Obamacare = electronic medical records.

Here's a troubling story. Obamacare mandates electronic medical records be installed by ALL providers. This means single doctor practices are going out of existence en mass.

In a slow-motion version of the problems that crippled online insurance "exchanges" for months, doctors who see patients under Medicare and Medi-Cal programs have been forced by federal law to install expensive, complex software systems that sharply reduce time for patients. For many doctors, it's the final straw. Surveys suggest that older physicians are retiring in high numbers. Younger ones are closing practices and taking jobs with integrated health systems.

Buuut but but weren't we told that computerized medical records allowed all kinds of knowledge base improvements and data sharing between professionals? Yeah, we were. That isn't what's happening though.

Nearly 70 percent of physicians say digitizing patient records has not been worth the cost, according to a survey by Medical Economics magazine. This negative cost-benefit view comes even after $27 billion in subsidies to health care providers for the systems.

One big problem is the dozens of systems don't talk to each other, because the feds didn't mandate interoperability before the rollout.

So communication gains among hospitals, clinics and doctors offices aren't happening. Adding insult, doctors can be criminally liable if hackers get hold of patient data.

Worse is the hit to productivity.

The problem is the doctor spends half your office visit typing crap into the computer himself, because the visit doesn't generate enough money for him to pay a clerk to do it. So now instead of being a doctor, he's a CLERK.

What's going to happen? Medical records are going to be NATIONALIZED, is what's going to happen. All those records are going to end up on a centralized serve at Health and Human Services in Washington DC. Some software company will make billions, they will build a multi-megabuck bunker in Virginia and fill it with servers, and y'all will officially stop sharing your thoughts and opinions with your doctors if you have any sense at all.

Because your doctors will have become informants for the government.

And that, my friends, is what's going to happen.

The Phantom