Obamacare: Hospitals to start monitoring credit card purchases?

Before Obamacare was passed one of the questions many of us had who oppose the idea that the government can force a person to buy a product (and still oppose this idea) was where does this idea stop? Could the government eventually tell you what to eat, what you cannot eat, and force you to join a gym? Of course, this was laughed off by supporters of the healthcare reform law as tinfoil hat material.

Now it appears as if this scenario might be getting one step closer to reality. According to this story hospitals in North and South Carolina are beginning to compile profiles on patients by using their credit card information to identify high risk people.

You may soon get a call from your doctor if you’ve let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of picking up candy bars at the check-out counter or begin shopping at plus-sized stores. That’s because some hospitals are starting to use detailed consumer data to create profiles on current and potential patients to identify those most likely to get sick, so the hospitals can intervene before they do. Information compiled by data brokers from public records and credit card transactions can reveal where a person shops, the food they buy, and whether they smoke. The largest hospital chain in the Carolinas is plugging data for 2 million people into algorithms designed to identify high-risk patients

Of course this is being done for our own good so I suppose we are supposed to accept this but I have one question; how in hell are these hospitals gaining access to people’s personal financial records without their permission?

The government, in my opinion, must be involved and you may remember the Federal government is creating a huge database consisting of the financial data of millions of Americans. Isn’t that convenient?

Is this still tinfoil hat material or is Big Brother watching?