NRA fingerprints in landmark health-care law
By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, Sunday, December 30, 4:14 PM
The words were tucked deep into the sprawling text of President Obama’s signature health-care overhaul. Under the headline, “Protection of Second Amendment Gun Rights,” was a brief provision restricting the ability of doctors to gather data about their patients’ gun use — a largely overlooked but significant challenge to a movement in American medicine to treat firearms as a matter of public health.
The language, pushed by the National Rifle Association in the final weeks of the 2010 debate over health care and discovered only in recent days by some lawmakers and medical groups, is drawing criticism in the wake of this month’s massacre of 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Conn. Some public health advocates, worried that the measure will hinder research and medical care, are calling on the White House to amend the language as it prepares to launch a gun-control initiative in January.
NRA officials say they requested the provision out of concern that insurance companies could use such data to raise premiums on gun owners. The measure’s supporters in the Senate say they did not intend to interfere with the work of doctors or researchers.
But physician groups and researchers see the provision as part of a decades-long strategy by the gun lobby to choke off federal support for studies into firearms injuries, which may soon overtake motor vehicle accidents as a leading cause of violent deaths in the United States.
full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nra-fingerprints-in-landmark-health-care-law/2012/12/30/e6018656-5066-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_singlePage.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Why are scared, cowardly Delicate Flowers (people too scared to live without a weapon) helping write laws?
Are we the "Land Of The Brave" or the "Land Of The Scared Mice"?
i'd go with "bribing politicians to write laws"
Land of the Lost? (i'll skip the silly t-rex pic) 
Adam Jentleson, Reid’s spokesman, said the senator never discussed the matter with the NRA. Reid “did not think it changed gun laws in any way,” Jentleson said. Instead, Reid and others saw the provision as necessary to dispel “myths” about the health-care bill that threatened to rile up opposition, including speculation that the law would allow the Obama administration to compile a database of gun owners.
The provision says that “wellness and prevention” portions of the health-care law “may not require the disclosure or collection of any information” relating to the “presence or storage of a lawfully possessed firearm or ammunition in the residence or on the property.” Further, the measure says the law cannot be used to “maintain records of individual ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition.” It adds that the price of health coverage may not be affected by the ownership, possession or use of guns.
Once the section was added to the bill, the NRA withheld opposition and remained neutral. Later that year, the group decided to remain on the sidelines in Reid’s reelection campaign despite criticizing him for supporting Obama’s Supreme Court nominees.
The deal to add gun language to the health-care bill was struck so quietly that several top officials in the Obama administration and in Congress had no idea the passages had been added until approached by The Washington Post last week.
negotiations
