Blog and News

An "oldie, but goody". This 2009 WSJ article was published as the healthcare reform efforts were being forced through Congress. Betsy McCaughey, RN, highlights the thoughts and recommendations of one of the president's leading advisors, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and provides a glimpse into the direction the president and his party want to take American healthcare.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for the greater good of society instead of focusing only on a patient’s needs. True reform, he argues, must include redefining doctors' ethical obligations.

 

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This headline should be seriously considered by all Americans. First, with the persistent decline of the US economy, an unprecedented number of unemployed Americans are becoming eligible for Medicaid and will therefore be affected by these new policies. Additionallly, as a direct result of legislation within the Obama healthcare law, more Americans again will come under the control of Medicaid for two specific reasons.

First, with the law's significant expansion of Medicad eligibility, 18-24 million Americans are likely to find themselves in this bankrupt program, some of whom may currently have private coverage. Secondly, due to the employer mandate, many businesses will find it less expensive to pay the "tax" for non-compliance and dump their existing medical insurance plan. This financial decision will leave workers on their own to either enter the Medicaid program or try to find coverage in the tax-payer funded state insurance "exchanges" if one even exists in their state.  

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According to PharmaTimes Online, Britain's National Institutes of Health are denying lupus patients access to the first new drug for this disease in 50 years. PharmaTimes reports NIH "concluded that Benlysta (belimumab) could not be considered a cost-effective use of NHS resources for patients with active autoantibody positive systemic lupus erythematosus with a high degree of disease activity despite standard therapy." 

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President Obama recess appointed Donald Berwick to the post of CMS administrator last year to avoid a messy Senate confirmation hearing during which Berwick's prior comments about embracing health care rationing were sure to be a topic of interest. Senate Republicans were all too willing to hold the hearing - it was Senate Democrats who did not want the hearing and President Obama obliged his former Democratic colleagues by making a recess appointment. 

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The Washington Post is reporting that CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, a vocal supporter of health care rationing, has decided to resign his post. Berwick was recess-appointed to the position by President Obama to circumvent the need for a Senate confirmation vote. The Democratic Majority on the Finance Committee was unwilling to schedule a hearing on the nominee in 2010 prior to the mid-term elections. 

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Welcome to D4PC "Morning Rounds", your daily review of healthcare news and information from Washington, DC and around the nation. These briefings will keep you up to date on recent developments and our effort to replace the PPACA with patient-centered reforms that protect the doctor-patient relationship and preserve individual freedom of choice. 

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D4PC Board Member Beth Haynes spoke out on TownHall.com on the myriad ways the government rations access to health care:

"Just over a year ago, the Christian Science Monitor reported on an antitrust case by the Department of Justice against Idaho orthopedists who, in refusing to accept government price controls, were found guilty of 'price fixing.' The DOJ hubristically declared, 'Government prices are market prices.' In this Orwellian move, the government declared voluntary prices to be price-fixing, and government-determined prices to be market prices. Anyone with common sense can see that changing terminology does not change reality. 

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Stanley Kurtz writes on National Review Online:

"The 2012 election, and the existence of a free health-care market in this country, could well depend on a little-known agency called IPAB. [Short for Independent Payment Advisory Board, it is], a vastly powerful but too often overlooked component of the president’s health-care-reform law. IPAB has not yet come into existence, but when Obamacare goes into full effect, it will be an unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic entity with nearly limitless power over federal Medicare spending. IPAB will have the power to effectively ration health care through price controls — which may not even be the scariest thing about it. That distinction arguably falls to its unprecedented overriding of congressional sovereignty, in flagrant violation of the constitutional separation of powers."

In his April 13 speech, in response to Paul Ryan’s deficit-reduction plan, President Obama pushed to give IPAB more power and more authority over Medicare pricing as part of the President's own deficit-reduction plan. Kurtz characterized the President's speech as calling for "a substantial expansion of IPAB’s already unprecedented powers," and noted that "Obama can’t begin to match Ryan’s deficit-reduction program without massive, IPAB-imposed health-care controls that would amount to rationing."

In contrast, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have offered an alternative about which Kurtz has said: "The advantage of the Ryan plan... is its reliance on patient choice. Having been taxed throughout their working lives to support a system that offers no choice, Medicare-dependent patients lose control of funds they might otherwise have used to purchase private health insurance. Ryan’s plan returns some of that money to Americans via a tax-supported health-care voucher. This allows consumers to choose the private insurance plan that most closely matches their priorities — devoting more or less resources to end-of-life care, for example."

Read the full article here...  

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From Sally Pipes...

"Democrats have recently seized on a novel way of reducing health care costs — threats.

"The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced that any insurance company that wants to increase premiums more than 10% will have to get approval from the government. Congress didn’t pass a law mandating this draconian policy — HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius simply decreed it."

While Vermont and Massachusetts are also headed towards a single payer system based on price controls, Canada, a country that has tried single payer, is moving away from that system.

According to Pipes, Dr. Claude Castonguay, the "father of Quebec Medicare," said in 2008 that “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Read the full article here...  

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Docs 4 Patient Care is carefully watching the situation in Vermont, where the state legislature has now passed a controversial plan to implement a government-run health care system. We will keep you informed as this situation continues to progress, but it appears that the governor will sign it.

"Major health reform legislation working its way through the Vermont Legislature has won final approval in the Senate, with the House expected to follow suit.

"The bill would put Vermont on a path toward universal health care, but it leaves until later several major decisions about how the program will work.

"Among them: how the system will be paid for, what benefits it will offer, and whether illegal immigrants will be covered by it..."

Read the AP story here, or a more complete article on Medscape.com (registration required).  

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High-deductible Health Plans Pose No Special Risks to Medically Vulnerable Populations

Note: RAND Corporation study corroborates a key Docs4PatientCare position)

Obamacare's Cruel and Inhumane Inflation-indexed Vouchers

Is this not exactly what the president stated about the Ryan plan for Medicare?

Why the Constitution's 10th Amendment Matters So Much?

Obamacare and Ignoring the Constitution

The President's Medicare Plan: A Trojan Horse to Rationed Healthcare

Cuts Leave Patients with Medicaid Card, but No Specialist to See

Good thing the president's healthcare law relies on adding up to 24 million Americans to this dysfunctional system.  

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