Five Steps to Rationing Health Care
This is Scott Gottlieb on the Senate health bill:
| Step One | The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services…will be given the authority to unilaterally write new rules on when medical devices and drugs can be used, and how they should be priced…when a cheaper medical option will suffice for a given problem and, in turn, when Medicare only has to pay for the least costly alternative. |
| Step Two | The Senate health-care bill also exempts Medicare’s actions from judicial review, taking away the right of patients to sue the government. |
| Step Three | Primary-care doctors who refer patients to specialists will face financial penalties under the plan. Doctors will see 5% of their Medicare pay cut when their “aggregated” use of resources is “at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization.” |
| Step Four | [The plan] imposes new costs on doctors who remain solo, mostly by increasing their overhead requirements [and] the plan offers doctors financial carrots if they give up their small practices and consolidate into larger medical groups, or become salaried employees of large institutions such as hospitals or “staff model” medical plans like Kaiser Permanente… The idea here is that Medicare can more easily apply its regulations to institutions that manage large groups of doctors than it can to individual physicians. |
| Step Five | The impact of these provisions won’t be confined to Medicare. Private insurance sold in the federally regulated “exchanges” will take cues from Medicare, since they’re both managed from the same bureaucracy. |
This is actually scary.
This issue is not getting the attention it needs. Thanks for this post.
Step Six: Better care at a lower cost. Fewer unnecessary tests, higher patient access and satisfaction. Expensive is not always better.
Step seven: a really cheap funeral — bare bones, with no frills.
This is very worrisome. I think most people are completely unaware of all this.
I’m just wondering how these people think they know what I need. Can they look at me and tell me that I need smoking cessation? drug rehab? extra fertility treatments? cancer treatments? If the answer to any one of these is “No” (they’ll all be know), then keep your hands off of my health care!
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Step 6: raise taxes through the roof, because we lied and said this was going to be cheap, so now that we’ve duped you out of your libery, we’ll take your money too.
So, millions of people without healthcare is better than rationing? The best healthcare money can provide, for those that can pay. Move out the dark ages… and stop watching FOX
NDW-millions of people may be without health insurance but they are not without healthcare. But now, many millions more will not receive the life extending, pain alleviating medical procedure, medication, specialist referral, diagnostic imaging so that government can now take those dollars to create a false sense of security for many who will believe their medical needs will now all be met by a benevolent government. They will eventually find out this claim is fraudulent.
Step Six: Better care at a lower cost. Fewer unnecessary tests, higher patient access and satisfaction. Expensive is not always better.