Finally, a federal agency rises up from the grave of stultified bureaucracy and creates a successful public relations and education campaign

By Seth Richardson

The federal Centers for Disease Control, a bureaucracy not known for having a sense of humor about disease pandemics managed to lighten up and recognize that humor is a powerful tool for public education. As Halloween approaches, people might think that the CDC’s “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” is a Halloween spoof, but it’s not. It’s a deadly-serious, and highly innovative attempt by the CDC to convince people that they need to think about things like the Bird Flu or an Anthrax attack now, and learn what to do in the event of a disease pandemic.

Back in May, David Daigle, of the CDC’s preparedness office and communication specialists Cathrine Jamal and Margaret Silver wrote a CDC blog entry about preparing for a disaster and referenced zombies in an attempt to boost the blogs readership, which hovers around one to three thousand hits per day. The effects were astounding. In less than a week the response to the blog crashed the CDC’s blog server and the page got more than 3 million views and more than 500 comments. “Most of our blogs get maybe five,” says Silver.

So, Silver, Daigle and Jamal went to work on creating a CDC-authorized graphic novel, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” in which the protagonists, everypersons Todd and Julie, hear about a viral disease that turns people into violent zombies and they then go to the CDC for advice on what to do to survive. To read the novel, go to www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies_novella.htm#.

What’s so great about this effort is that it cost the CDC all of $87 for a stock photo, and some staff time, rather than the millions spent on public information programs that nobody pays attention to. And it’s proven to be far more effective.

Why is this important? Because when the public is uneducated and unprepared for disasters, people die for real.

For decades, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been recommending that people have preparedness supplies on hand that will allow them to survive on their own for up to three days in the event of a natural or man-made disaster, but few people listen. During hurricane Katrina, many people didn’t know what to do or where to go, and even the incompetents who were elected to deal with such disasters,(former)  New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and (former) Louisana Governor Kathleen Blanco didn’t have a clue what to do, and more than 1800 people died as a result of ignorance and disbelief that they were in danger. Many hundreds of thousands more suffered because they were ill-equipped to survive on their own until help could arrive.

Public education in proper disaster response is critical, but because most people don’t think a disaster will ever happen to them, most people ignore the risks, much less the educational materials the government spends millions creating.

Anything the government can do that effectively educates and stimulates people into thinking about disasters and how to respond to them is a worthy effort. Self-reliance and preparedness are what will get you through a disaster, be it a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, or a zombie apocalypse. Ignorance and sticking your head in the sand will get you killed.

So, kudos to the CDC and to Daigle, Silver and Jamal, three federal government employees who have demonstrated all the good things about our government public servants in a time when government is (largely rightfully) under attack for overspending and wasting money. I only wish all our public employees could manage to get as much bang for a buck as these three sterling examples of our federal workforce.

© 2011 Altnews

Almost completely under the radar, unaccountable snoops and government bureaucrats are soon going to be  running their grubby fingers  through your personal, private medical records

By Seth Richardson

Do you care if some private company has state-authorized access to your medical files without your permission? Do you care if people you don’t know and didn’t authorize can find out about your embarrassing genital warts, or your HIV/AIDS status, or the fact that your child has a drug abuse problem? Do you care if some unaccountable employee at a non-governmental organization gets to talk around the water cooler about your erectile dysfunction or your mastectomy? Do you care that people you have no control over and who can conceal everything they do from you might be taking salacious pleasure in reading the details of your private conversations with your psychiatrist? Do you care if this private organization, after raiding your files, sells the information in them to other people in order to fund it’s intrusions on your rights?

I certainly do.

Last week, after attending the Gazette’s and the Independence Institute’s sold-out forum “A Constitutional Guide to Fighting Federal Overreach; A program for the Grassroots” I was invited to schmooze with Independence Institute sponsor Mike Krause and others at the hotel pub. I thought it would be a nice social occasion, but what I heard from Mike literally turned my stomach and made my blood boil. Now I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

I learned that during the 2010 legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly and former Governor Bill Ritter treacherously betrayed every citizen of Colorado by passing a law authorizing the seizure of our personal medical records by a private, non-governmental organization, the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC), and almost nobody noticed except the watchdogs of liberty at the Independence Institute.

The “All-Payer Claims Database” is the brainchild of liberal policy wonks like Jenny Nate, a blogoflack for the CIVHC, who are all delighted at the way Obamacare has allowed them to “leverage” state and federal law in order to get the legal authority to pry into your private medical affairs without your permission and with no way to oversee what they do with that information.

In her blog at the CIVHC website, Nate writes, “Just like everybody else, policy wonks have dreams.  Two years ago, it was a big dream of mine that someday Colorado would become one of the leading states in America to increase transparency around what we’re paying for and what we’re getting for our health care dollar through the creation of an all-payer claims database…On May 26, 2010, my wonky dream came true when Governor Ritter signed House Bill 10-1330 authorizing the creation of a statewide all payer claims database (APCD). This legislation extended the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) authority to compel insurers to provide claims data for use in an APCD.”

Transparency my fundament. She want’s transparency of your private medical records, but her organization is set up to utterly deny any transparency regarding what they do with that information.

She goes on to crow about the depth of detail the database will contain: “An all-payer claims database (APCD) is a database that typically includes data derived from medical, eligibility, provider, pharmacy, and/or dental files from private and public payers, including insurance companies, third party administrators, Medicaid and Medicare.  These databases include covered services for the population, a unique member identification number, patient demographics, plan and member payments, and some clinical information.” Translation: She is literally drooling at the notion of having access to every detail about your medical visits to your doctor, your pharmacist, your dentist and anybody else who serves your medical needs.

Nate’s wonky dreams aside, just who the hell do these people think they are? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question, we know who they are, they are liberal Progressives who think that their “need” to analyze health care in Colorado trumps your Fourth Amendment right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. People like Nate, and former Governor Bill Ritter, who signed this travesty of government invasion of privacy care nothing about you or your privacy, they care only about advancing the power of the state over your life.

But it gets far, far worse. If the system was part of the state government, run by state employees and subject to oversight by the General Assembly and transparent in its operations and budget as required by the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), at least we would have the right, and the opportunity to keep track of what’s going on and who is using these records, how, and why. But the CIVHC is not a governmental agency. In fact, it just received it’s approval as a private 501 c3 non-profit from the IRS. This means it’s completely immune from scrutiny by the public under the CORA.

In a letter to the Independence Institute, CIVHC director Phil Kalin wrote: “As you are no doubt aware, CIVHC is no longer an entity of state government, having been spun off as an independent 501(c )(3) in May… [W]e do not intend to distribute a detailed budget publicly…”

Where in the Constitution, state or federal, does the state of Colorado find authority to give a private organization legal access, under threat of state-sanctioned fines, to private medical information and then make that organization exempt from all public scrutiny? Nowhere, that’s where!

It’s time to put a stop to this gross invasion of medical privacy and our constitutional rights. Call your state representatives and demand that they repeal the law. Call your doctor or insurer and tell them that if they release your private information to the CIVHC, you will sue them for invasion of privacy. Call CIVHC and tell them that you will not tolerate them invading your privacy and will sue them as well. Remember, they aren’t a state agency, so they don’t have sovereign immunity like the state does. Don’t be deterred by the state law, file a lawsuit anyway. Bury them in hundreds of thousands of individual lawsuits and sap their funding merely by having to pay lawyers to file answers to the claims. Give them a SLAPP…a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Private Participation” in violating your rights.

And write letters to your local newspapers objecting to this travesty of Progressive arrogance. Get the word out. Make it a news story any way you can.

If we don’t put a stop to it now, your private information will begin flowing into this enormous civil rights violation of a database in December. Thankfully, it was delayed somewhat or it would already be in operation, so there is still time to put a stop to it. Make the calls, make them today, or forfeit your medical privacy forever.

© 2011 Altnews