Death by Rationing

The various health care bills before Congress this summer, if enacted, will kill your mother. Regardless of what President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or the other Democrat leaders say, their legislation will ration health care.

Consider:

• They say there are 47 million uninsured Americans. If true, and if they are all covered by the new universal health care program then 47 million people will soon consume much more health care than they consume now. Demand for health care nationally should increase by more than 20% but the number of doctors, nurses, clinics, and hospital beds will remain roughly constant.
  
• The program makes no secret of its intention to squeeze doctor’s pay in the name of efficiency and eliminating abuse. But if a job pays less then less people want the job. Less pay will result in fewer doctors.
  
  These situations will produce higher demand for a shrinking supply of service. Normally, prices would go up but, under universal heath care, prices will be controlled. This will produce lines of people waiting for service; like the lines at gas pumps when the price of gas was controlled in 1973; like the lines at controlled price Soviet food stores when a rumor circulated that the store had fresh fruit.
  
  It will result in months-long waits for certain tests and treatments; kind of like the waits in Canada and the United Kingdom under their current universal health care administrations.
  
  People will die waiting for treatment.
  
  Consider:
• The bills would establish a “Federal Health Board” empowered to approve procedures & medications based on their cost and typical effectiveness. Health care providers would be prohibited from administering disapproved treatments. Your doctor, your mother’s doctor, would not be allowed to prescribe the treatment he believes is necessary or best in your mother’s individual case. He would be constrained to prescribe only the treatments allowed by the “Federal Health Board”.
• It is said that 90% of health care expenses are incurred in the last 6 months of life. That could be understood to mean 90% of the cost of your personal medical care under today’s circumstances is, on average, expended in the last six months of your life.
  
• The program diverts $200 billion net from Medicare to help fund the currently uninsured. Proponents say the cuts will extend the life of the Medicare “trust fund” by five years.
  
• Elderly people will be required by the program to undergo periodic “End of Life Counseling” encouraging death (hospice or assisted suicide) instead of treatment.
  
• Proponents of “universal health care” describe calculating a value of expected remaining quality life - for use in treatment approval decisions for elderly or terminal patients.
  
  These thoughts imply a predilection toward estimating the remaining life of the patient if effective treatment is administered; when the estimate is six months or less then treatment would be cut off. As President Obama put it, “you might be better off just taking a pain pill”.
  
  Depending on exactly how the calculation of a “value of expected remaining quality life” works, that six month cut off time for treatment could be much longer. After all, once they chop off the last six months of your mother’s life they will quickly find that 90% of the remaining health care costs are incurred in the last six months of your mother’s new and shorter life. And so they will be tempted to chop off another six months, and another, and another?
  
  Health care cost can indeed be controlled. Demand can be brought back in balance with supply.
  
  All that is needed is death by rationing.

Links to Other Topics in the Special Report: Universal Health Care