Medical identity theft is up for a huge jump in the coming years. This isn’t speculation on your Guide’s part, this is a fact. But the proposed solution may be even less acceptable than the problem. According to a 2010 article in Tennessee, the bill that has mandated socialized medicine includes the “mark of the beast.” But we’ll get back to that in a moment.
There was a lot of resistance to President Obama’s health reform program before it was passed, and some of the logic behind it escapes the informed consumer. One of the biggest logic bombs, perhaps, was Nancy Pelosi saying “you have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it…”, a philosophy that really runs counter to the idea of how America makes laws in the first place. One would think the Minority Leader for our House of Representatives would have known that. But the program was passed into law, and now that consumers are “finding out what is in it” they aren’t as pleased as Obama (or Pelosi) might have hoped.
Despite the pushback, somehow the bill was passed into law, and has now created a whole slew of new problems as implementation ramps up. An editorial in the Chicago Tribune discusses how millions of workers might have been left with no insurance coverage, if not for a 1-year “waiver” by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Your Guides concern is the centralized reporting of medical (and financial) information. This will be necessary because, according to the socialized healthcare law, the government must be able to review your medical history and your ability to pay for medical needs, to ensure there is no duplication of medical services, that appropriate medical services are rendered, and that the patient pays their fair share according to federal guidelines. PinnacleCare Private Health Advisory summarizes how centralized medical records would improve quality of service worldwide, and your Guide couldn’t agree with their position more.
But the flip side of centralized medical records is having them exposed to more people, and more places for them to be compromised. Another Chicago Tribune article says that 1 in 3 professionals they asked said they had caught someone using another persons identity to get medical service. And that was just the doctors and insurance people they asked.
There is a big push to start using the “cloud” for data storage, which presents even more problems for storing sensitive information – and we must really hope that medical providers don’t choose to use it, because using the “cloud” means you don’t even have control of the machines that are storing your data. You don’t know where it’s even located, much less how well protected it is from data breaches. This doesn’t even address the concern that the information is destined to the control of the Federal government, which has a poor track record indeed when it comes to data breaches and dealing with identity theft related issues.
All of which brings us back to the “chip” concept. From an identity theft perspective, a digitally encoded microchip inserted into your body is a perfect way to verify your identity to medical providers. In fact, there are a lot of positive arguments about the same chip carrying financial information, employment information, even GPS technology as well. It would sure cut down on identity theft, to be able to wave a digital wand over someone’s hand and verify they are the person they say they are. And with the addition of GPS information, tracking terrorists would be easy, as would locating criminals who are “wanted”. Kidnapping would become virtually unheard of – how can you kidnap someone when they can be located by GPS in just a few seconds?
But Christian eschatology (dealing with prophesies about the “end times” and the coming of “the beast”) talks quite plainly about just this type of world; a world where one could not buy or sell or do anything else unless they had “the mark of the beast.” That “mark” is said to have been on the hand or forehead – the two most logical places that a microchip would be planted. The hand, most specifically, is ideal because the gap between the thumb and forefinger lends itself quite nicely to implanting a device like this.
Now, your Guide doesn’t claim to be an expert in religion, theology, or anything of that sort. Being able to read a Bible doesn’t make anyone an expert on it. However, given the demographics of the United States, and the majority of our population claiming Christianity as their faith, it isn’t hard to see that this sort of technology will quickly become a hotbed, as more and more of us become aware of the implications of the health reform bill.
