The federal government is pressuring more and more medical doctors to ask their patients if they own firearms, according to a healthcare professional.
The feds are using Medicare reimbursements along with the new electronic medical record format standardized by the government to coerce doctors to ask patients about their guns and other personal questions, reported Dr. Mark Kestner, who writes for The Murfreesboro Post.
“In essence, the feds are using their control of Medicare reimbursement to manipulate how your physician handles your personal health information,” he wrote. “As part of that process, the doctors are required to seek the answers to a certain number of personal questions from all their patients, including asking about gun ownership.”
The new electronic format allows the information to be made “available to government entities,” Dr. Kestner added.
“The federal Medicare program is structured in such a way that physicians had little choice but to comply with the program,” he continued. “On the one hand, if physicians complied with the program fully by last year they were rewarded with a financial incentive of several thousand dollars.”
“However, if they delayed or failed to agree to provide the data they will be penalized by a certain percentage of Medicare payments going forward.”
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