Saying Goodbye to Things in Healthcare We May Never Know Again

Anyone with even a few brain cells can see the current administration is politicizing and weaponizing federal agencies and turning them into its personal police force. That’s never happened before in the U.S. despite what the current administration says. It’s all about transference.

I thought about what that means for me as a veteran healthcare journalist. The answer is I may never be reporting on certain things again. Those things being credible, objective data released on a regular basis by some of the federal agencies I’ve written about for years.

Here’s an example that inspired this post. Typically, in late February, the U.S. Justice Department releases its latest annual report on civil fraud and false claims settlements and judgments collected by the agency, including those in healthcare. I ignore the press release spin and report on trends in the data as a gauge of whether the Justice Department is getting tougher or weaker on healthcare fraud.

Here’s the story I did last year about it: “Justice Department Sleeping at the Healthcare Fraud Wheel.”

I’ve been checking the last few weeks for the latest annual report. I even had it marked in my monthly (paper) planner. Nothing. Most of the agency’s press releases were little more than propaganda.

Then I thought about all the other things I may never see and report about again. Either because they don’t support the current regime’s lies or because the current regime fired the people who crunch the numbers. Here’s a quick list off the top of my head:

• National health expenditure data (historic and projected) from CMS
• Uninsured data (total and percentage of) from the Census Bureau
• ACA enrollment data from CMS
• Breaches of protected health information from HHS
• Medical debt data from the Consumer Bureau of Financial Protection
• Healthcare-associated infection data from the CDC
• New drug approvals from the FDA

I know if I took the time, I could come up with dozens more.

One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is controlling the flow of information to the public. It’s easier to control what people think if you don’t tell them what you don’t want them to know. We may never know a lot about healthcare ever again.

Thanks for reading.