Read A Doctor's Evaluation of ObamaCare and Rationing
Dr. David McKalip
August 27, 2009
President Obama is right that the “status quo” has gotten us to a point where health insurance and medical costs are unaffordable for Americans. That status quo is one in which governments and large insurance companies hold all the money and power – and this would not change under any Congressional proposal. In fact, Congress and President Obama would require every citizen to buy insurance or pay a penalty of 2.5 percent of their income. Congress will in fact strengthen the status quo with only one new feature: state-imposed rationing.
To save money for themselves, the government and insurance companies will withhold “incentives” to punish doctors who dare to prescribe needed tests and treatment. The president proposes giving congressional powers to an unelected panel of “medical experts,'' the Independent Medicare Advisory Committee” (IMAC), which would make recommendations on annual Medicare payment rates and coverage decisions – which will usually be adopted by insurance companies.
The president claims that including some doctors on IMAC will mean they can be trusted and nonpolitical, but this could not be further from the truth. I have sat on such committees in Washington, and they have been political for decades - pitting one specialty against another for their piece of the budget pie. In the end, the IMAC will issue edicts to penalize doctors who don’t “comply” with rationing plans.
Congress would use using incentives to pay for “quality” and “efficiency” rather than volume. Unfortunately, current evidence shows us that a political and corporate committee cannot define quality or efficiency. United HealthCare has a government-approved system that awards doctors two stars if they are “efficient.” These doctors get access to more patients and the patients pay less. Unfortunately, the doctors are asked to minimize spending on patients to achieve that rating.
I perform delicate spine surgery on the neck. United HealthCare decided that such patients in Tampa Bay should receive no more than about $17,000 worth of care. Three of my seven United patients received about $22,000 worth of needed medical care, tests and treatments. United would reward me if I denied care to my patients by reverting to 35-year-old surgery that used no plate, required an extra incision for a bone graft, and denied a night in the ICU. For refusing to ration care, I was punished and I dropped their plan.
When political committees create “one size fits all medicine,” the wrong medical care is given to large groups of patients. For instance, to get a better report card and incentives, doctors followed the government edict to give antibiotics within four hours to pneumonia patients – but people who didn’t really have pneumonia were given antibiotics. Heart attack patients were automatically given beta-blockers to get a better report card, but some ended up with life-threatening drops in blood pressure. This “best practice” had to be dropped after several years of causing damage. When the “quality score” of death rates following heart surgery were reported publicly in New York, surgeons simply stopped operating on difficult patients, leaving them to suffer, die or seek care in another state. No doctors’ committee can properly and efficiently practice medicine. Doctors’ committees are common in Canada and British single-payer systems where they routinely deny life saving drugs for cancer, ration care, allow long waiting lines and create medical refugees fleeing to America.
The president likes to call rational critics “naysayers” and their facts “scare tactics.” This is the president who scares America by forecasting economic doom without his brand of “change” and whose supporters run ads claiming children are denied chemotherapy when no such thing happens in America. He should make real changes like allowing people to get lower cost health insurance across state lines and tax-free insurance outside work. Place the power for health spending into the hands of patients – not insurance companies and government. When patients have the power, they can demand more time from their doctors, better understand their options and make rational choices for health spending that will benefit them. Government and charity can then help the small percentage of people who are too poor or sick to find affordable health insurance in a fair marketplace.
Each Congressional health system reform proposal grants excessive powers to federal agencies to control how doctors practice medicine by using penalties to force doctors to ration care. Congress will extend that power to insurers after each person is mandated to buy a government approved and over-priced health insurance plan. Congress will alter the patient-physician relationship so doctors checks with bureaucrats prior to spending money on their patients. The doctor will work for “the system” to avoid penalties and patients will have every right to lose trust in their doctor. How can this be viewed as good change in the status quo?
Dr. McKalip is a St. Petersburg neurosurgeon, Immediate Past-President of the Florida Neurosurgical Society and a Senior Fellow of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
|
|
Urgent Petition
|
Sign the petition to stop Social Security Cuts and send a fax to every Member of Congress demanding they cut other spending, NOT SOCIAL SECURITY.
Share This Petition
|
Recent News
Friday, May 18, 2012
Congressional Republicans are back up to their old shenanigans on ObamaCare. Politico reveals that Republicans would try to replicate popular parts of Obama’s health care law if the Supreme Court overturns the law this summer.
Read Full Story
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Source: ABC News
The Food and Drug Administration has warned doctors to watch for fractures of the upper thigh bone in patients taking several popular drugs designed to prevent hip fractures and fight osteoprothesis. The FDA warns that Fosamax and Boniva in particular, if taken unnecessarily or for too long, may actually be causing the bone fractures they are prescribed to prevent. Watch ABC News video.
Read Full Story
Thursday, May 17, 2012
 Exit Not An Option In Chuck Schumer's America. New York Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced the Fugitive Taxpayer Act of 2012 to re-impose taxes on expatriates after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Proposal also would impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship and would bar such individuals from ever reentering the United States again.
Read Full Story
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Whether President Obama gets his second term or Romney enters the Oval Office, there’s a third candidate no one’s paying much attention to, and that candidate is guaranteed to be the one clear winner of election 2012: the U.S. military and our ever-surging national security state.
Read Full Story
Friday, May 11, 2012
According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million US seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. 4.2 percent of all student loan debt is held by people over the age of 60, and that share grows with each passing year.
Read Full Story
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Across the U.S. economy, anxiety is rising about the potential for widespread disruptions after the November election, when a lame-duck Congress will have barely two months to resolve a grinding standoff over taxes and spending.
Read Full Story
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats polled support making immediate cuts to the military across the board -- a position at odds with the leaderships of both political parties.
Read Full Story
Monday, May 7, 2012
Video revealing the circumstances of how a mentally ill homeless man in Fullerton, Calif. died last July was finally published Monday, revealing a stunningly brutal police assault that left Kelly Thomas bleeding, broken and near death.
Read Full Story
Monday, May 7, 2012
The number of people with jobs declined for the second month in a row, falling by 169,000 in April after easing by 31,000 in March. This means that there were 200,000 fewer Americans with jobs in April than there were in February. Additionally, the percentage of working-age adults who either have jobs or are looking for work, fell to 63.6%, which is the lowest level since December 1981.
Read Full Story
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
In November 2010, a police lieutenant from Parma, Ohio, asked Vanguard Defense Industries if the Texas-based drone manufacturer could mount a “grenade launcher and/or 12-gauge shotgun” on its ShadowHawk drone for U.S. law enforcement agencies. The answer was yes.
Read Full Story
Read All Recent News
Get in the Know Now
Get SSI Email Alerts
Social Networks
Action Center
|
