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In a letter entitled: A Special Message from Governor Rick Snyder: Health and Wellness

Governor Snyder outlines his plan to push for the implementation of Obama Care by Thanksgiving in addition to beginning a statewide body weight tracking of citizens under 18.

“Advances in technology offer excellent opportunities to efficiently connect individuals, government, and the private sector. We must take advantage of these opportunities..by using technologies that remotely monitor patients
….We will develop platforms for sharing electronic health information. The state is in the process of implementing the Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN), which is10Michigan’s initiative to improve health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety through the sharing of electronic health information, while reducing costs.

The MiHIN is essential to ensuring that Michigan’s health care providers can utilize Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in a meaningful way that will allow for a patient’s health information to be available when needed most—at the point of care.
With the MiHIN infrastructure in place, health care providers will be in a position to access and share the information within EHRs regardless of specific technology used or where the patient is from. ….

I (Gov. Snyder) strongly support establishing a Michigan-based on-line health insurance exchange that will emphasize free market principles and serve as a competitive marketplace for individuals and businesses to obtain health insurance, including some of our most vulnerable residents who are currently uninsured.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires each of the states to establish a health insurance exchange by 2014. If Michigan does not establish its own exchange, then the federal government will step in to operate one for Michigan. While I recognize that all or a portion of the ACA may be repealed or found to be unconstitutional in lawsuits that are 12 currently pending, Michigan must be prudent and plan to reach the best possible outcome under the existing law.

This plan will leverage existing state technical systems to the extent possible and be funded, to a large extent, by federal grants. In order to meet the rigid federal guidelines for states to establish their own health insurance exchanges, and to utilize the federal funding, I urge the legislature to enact legislation creating the MI Health Marketplace before this Thanksgiving. Moving quickly will also put Michigan in a position to shape the development of federal health care reform.”

A Rand study done for Obama’s home state of Illinois outlines the resistance of some states to implement Affordable Care Act health care exchange, the cost to taxpayers among other findings…..

“Expanding Illinois’ Medicaid program under the federal health-care reform law will cost the state $1.3 billion a year in 2020 and beyond, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. The annual cost is at least six times higher than what state officials have estimated since the federal Affordable Care Act became law in March 2010.

….Most studies have estimated that it’s going to cost between $20,000 and $25,000 for a physician to install electronic health records in his or her office…..

…..Some states, depending on their political leadership, are resisting the reform law’s implementation, challenging it in court or hoping the law will be repealed after the November 2012 elections. But in Illinois – the home of President Barack Obama and where Democrats control the legislative and executive branches – state officials are working to set up a health-insurance exchange that would route the uninsured and small businesses to affordable private insurance or Medicaid.”

However instead of holding out or fighting Obama’s Affordable Care Act, our “political leadership” in Michigan is choosing to be “prudent” and step up
The implementation of Obama Care!

And Michigan has the means to “leverage existing state technical systems” to implement The Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges based on Governor’s Snyder plan legislature to enact legislation creating the MI Health Marketplace before this Thanksgiving.

In 2009 IBM announced plans and has created a Global Delivery Center in East Lansing that provides “application development and support services for “IT systems for state and local government agencies and universities. Additionally, IBM will accommodate work from telecommunications, and health care…

How convenient for electronic medical records for Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges!

Press Release from the city of East Lansing

EAST LANSING, Mich. – The State of Michigan and IBM (NYSE: IBM), in close partnership with Michigan State University (MSU), today announced the creation of a Global Delivery Center for Application Services to be located on the MSU campus in East Lansing.
The state estimates that the IBM Global Delivery Center’s move will create up to 1,500 new direct and indirect jobs in Michigan over the next five years, with 100 new direct jobs created by June 2009.

The Global Delivery Center will be the first of its kind in the United States for IBM. The center will provide innovative application development and support services to modernize older and less efficient IT systems for state and local government agencies and universities. Additionally, IBM will accommodate work from telecommunications, health care and other U.S.-based clients in the center with a focus on modernizing IT applications through process excellence, tooling automation and asset re-use.

“We are working hard every day to grow our economy and create jobs,” said Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm. “This center is an outstanding example of a project that brings together economic development, educational opportunity and jobs in a way that can help transform our economy in the 21st century.

In an article entitled “IBM forming health information technology ventures”
published in July of 2005 the author Christopher Guadagnino, Ph.D. discusses the global informational technology of a “brave new world” in the health care industry

“There are a number of technologies benefiting from the greater digitization of health care that can help improve the process of care – one of them is a process of tracking things in hospitals called radio frequency identification.

However, there is a lot of legitimate discussion about security, privacy and appropriate use of the data more than, frankly, any particular technology issue, per se. So, both the opportunity and the challenge is to create the right forum which the federal government and other organizations have been trying to do in order to create consensus as rapidly as possible around these standards so you don’t have islands of automation, which is often the case today. I’m sure that in the next two to three years we will see advances in interoperability far beyond what we’ve seen in the last five to ten years. We will see that because there’s leadership on this issue from the federal government,…
The more we can move to a pay-for-performance type of arrangement where caregivers and institutions are compensated for investments in health care information technology that allow them to improve the care process, the more we’re going to be able to overcome the incentive challenge – and the general cultural challenge of doing things differently within these complex institutions….

Additionally included in Governor Snyder’s letter on Health and Wellness

From a Lansing based new service:

“…Snyder is expected to announce Wednesday that he wants the state to begin tracking body weight in young patients through state registry, according to The Associated Press.

The body mass index statistics for patients under 18 would be reported to the Michigan Care Improvement Registry, but the children’s identity would remain anonymous. The state already requires doctors to report how many children are immunized, the AP reported.”

In a piece entitled “Should States Refuse to Implement Obama Care’s Health Insurance Exchanges?” Author Peter Suderman states,:

“As I argued in March, states whose legislators oppose last year’s health care law have a number of reasons to refuse to participate in implementing its requirements, particularly when it comes to the exchanges. For one thing, it’s better policy: States authorities who follow the federal government’s rules won’t have much flexibility to set up their exchanges as they see fit. It’s also better politics: Refusing to play ball with the federal government ensures that the federal government will have to take responsibility for the complex details of the law’s implementation. Given that Missouri’s residents voted overwhelmingly last year to reject one of Obama Care’s key features, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, it’s clear enough where the state’s voters stand.
Finally, there’s the constitutional question: Shouldn’t states currently challenging the law’s constitutionality—like Missouri (and Michigan formerly/http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164–248945–,00.html )—steer clear of implementing it?

The citizens of Michigan need to tell Governor Snyder that We do not want to move forward on the implementation of Obama Care via the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges nor do we do not want our children tracked by the government!

Governor Rick Snyder
P.O. Box 30013
Lansing, Michigan 48909
PHONE: (517) 373-3400
PHONE: (517) 335-7858 – Constituent Services
FAX:(517) 335-6863
E-MAIL: Rick.Snyder@michigan.gov