Senate Bill Proves ObamaCare Will Ration Healthcare

Let's dispense with the subtleties: The current healthcare deform bill on the verge of passing the Senate will reduce your care, increase your cost, place a bureaucrat between you and  your doctor and ultimately ration your care. Period. Anyone who says differently is lying, stupid or both. There can be no  varying degrees of interpretation at this point. It's in the bill.

Don't believe me? Check out Sen. Tom Coburn's op-ed piece in the Dec. 17, 2009 Wall Street Journal ("The Health Bill Is Scary"). Sen. Coburn (R-OK) brings two distinct advantages to this debate that the socialized medicine cheerleaders don't. First, he's actually read the bill. Second, he's a practicing physician of 25 years. He understands the practical implications of health policy decisions being made by 25-year-old Hill interns and Obama White House policy wonks.

It is also worth noting that Sen. Coburn is a two-time cancer survivor . So having stared down the barrel of the Grim Reaper's gun twice, he understands what's at stake here in a way those policy wonks will never be able to.

"Every American, not just seniors, should know that the rationing provisions in the Senate bill will not only reduce their quality of life, but their life span as well," he writes.

Why so? Well, here's the unvarnished truth that is in the bill:

• Sections 3403 and 2021 clearly tell Medicare to deny coverage if it is deemed too expensive. The law would create a stronger "Independent Medicare Advisory Board ," the function of which will be to stretch Medicare dollars by rationing care. The board would be composed, according to Sen. Coburn, of "permanent, unelected, and, therefore, unaccountable members." This is the Death Panel at which Democrats scoffed and denied its existence. 
• Sections 6301 mandates creation of "comparative effectiveness research (CER) programs . These are modeled on the "Quality Adjusted Life Years " panels used for years by the British National Health Service. In Britain this form of rationing has been responsible 15,000 premature cancer deaths each year, according to that country's National Cancer Intelligence Network . QALYs are "black box actuarial tables " that are used to cost justify denying you treatment. Essentially are like the cost-benefit analysis that a corporation uses to justify any investment. If the bureaucrat in charge deems that you don't have enough time left on earth for the government to recover its investment in a drug, surgery or other treatment, or to return that investment to society (i.e. if you are retired and no longer productive), then you'll be denied the treatment, regardless of what your physician recommends. Count on it. 
• Section 2713 of the Senate bill explicitly mandates that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force approve all health insurance plan coverages. The Task Force, you may remember from last month, is the group that issued an advisory for women under age 50 not to undergo annual mammograms. The president claims, disingenuously, that the Task Force pronouncements do not carry the force of law. But when he signs this bill, they will. Just watch how many insurers in 2010 try to get ahead of the bow wave and drop mammogram coverage for women under 50. This is a form of rationing.

The bill also expands the number of people eligible for Medicaid, the government-run healthcare program formerly for poor people. But Medicaid is already rationed. Because the government is too inept at running it, many doctors wait nearly 6 months for reimbursement for care provided under the program. It also underpays doctors. For these reasons many doctors refuse to take Medicaid patients.

In Maryland, according to Sen. Coburn's analysis, 17,000 Medicaid patients are currently on a waiting list for treatment . As many as 250 may have died waiting to be cared for, according to the state. And in Kansas, where current Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was governor, there is a backlog of more than 15,000 Medicaid patients waiting treatment. Sec. Sebelius would be in charge of ObamaCare. What's not in this bill is any guarantees that ObamaCare would be any less inept or inefficient than Medicaid. So get ready for the waiting lists. It's our future.

My point is not to scare anyone. It is to present an unheard voice in this debate, the voice of someone who is a practicing physician and also must vote on this bill. So if your Democrat friends start arguing with you about healthcare, giving you the same old anti-corporate, emotional Routine Number 8 from the 1960s playbook, you quote the bill--chapter and verse numbers--to them and ask them to deny it. It's time this bill was evaluated on the facts of what it is, not some idealistic dream of what the Democrats want it to be.

Just thought you might like to know.