The Senate's healthcare deform bill is about to drop this week. In it the upper chamber lays out its plan for rationing healthcare. The Senate bill calls for creation of a 15 member panel appointed by the president to decide how much to spend on healthcare each year and how to spend it. Fifteen unelected bureaucrats who serve at the sole discretion of this president. No advice or consent by the Senate. And they called the Bush presidency imperial.
The Wall Street Journal has a good take on this plan in its Monday lead editorial. It quotes Alain Enthoven, noted healthcare economist, as calling this type of "global" budgeting "bombing from 35,000 feet, where you don't see the faces of the people you kill."
And kill it will. Washington state has a similar body that oversees budgeting for its Medicaid program, its public employees, and the inmates in its correctional system. Known by its innocuous-sounding technocratic name--the Health Technology Assessment--this group has in the past banned:
- arthroscopic surgery for arthritis sufferers
- spinal stimulation
- MRIs of the abdomen, pelvis or breasts in cases where cancer is suspected
This panel may also ban ultrasounds in pregnancies on the basis of cost, even though the panel admits they are highly effective. So reports The Journal.
Democrats complained loudly when conservatives called such administrative takeovers of healthcare "death panels." Pres. Obama called such talk "a lie, plain and simple." But's hard to see that they are anything but. And get ready: They're on the way, if the Democrats prevail in this fight.
Just thought you might like to know.
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