Catastrophe - Dick Morris [48]
Obama won’t control your insurance company. He’ll just control the money. And it will be his bureaucrats, not your insurance company, who will make the key decisions and lay out the guidelines. Of course, Obama will leave it to your insurance company and its managed care people to break the bad news to you. Government won’t do that. It’ll be too busy pulling the strings behind the scenes—setting the standards, designing the protocols, making up the requirements, and deciding how the money will be spent.
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BREAKING THE OBAMA CODE ON MEDICAL RATIONING
WHAT OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN PROMISED
“A study by the Rand Corporation found that if most hospitals and doctors’ offices adopted electronic health records, up to $77 billion of savings would be realized each year through improvements such as reduced hospital stays, avoidance of duplicative and unnecessary testing, more appropriate drug utilization, and other efficiencies.”158
WHAT HE MEANS
Federal bureaucrats will decide who gets what test, who gets to take what medication, who gets what treatment, how long you can stay in the hospital and other “efficiencies.”
WHAT OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN PROMISED
“Barack Obama will accelerate efforts to develop and disseminate best practices, and align reimbursement with provision of high quality health care.”159
WHAT HE MEANS
You won’t be able to be reimbursed by your insurance company unless you do it our way, prescribe only the medicines we sign off on, treat the illness the way we want, and give only the tests we accept. And the emphasis, of course, will be on inexpensive care—not good care.
WHAT OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN PROMISED
“Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes them difficult to use to coordinate care, measure quality, or reduce medical errors. Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records. [He] will also phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT and commit the necessary federal resources.”160 He made good on the promise in the stimulus bill, which included the allocation of the necessary funds.
WHAT HE MEANS
By requiring standardized reporting of medical procedures, he can more easily control who gets them and which ones. The electronic record-keeping system is the necessary first step toward rationing.
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HOW WILL RATIONING WORK?
Rationally.
If you’re old and near death, the system will not allow you a full spectrum of medical services, tests, medications, or options. If you die somewhat prematurely as a result, that’s an unfortunate by-product of the needs of the system. After all, there are younger people who need the care more than you do, and there’s not enough to go around.
You won’t always get to see a doctor. Often you’ll have to make do with a nurse-practitioner. A particularly brutal form of triage will be used to decide who can most benefit from what sort of care.
The victims will be the elderly, the sickest, and those who smoke or otherwise inflict harm upon themselves.
The beneficiaries will be the young, the poor, the newly legalized illegal immigrants, and others of Obama’s constituency.
How do we know? That’s how it works in Canada.
THE CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
Canada has the same kind of government-provided health care that Obama is suggesting for the United States. It looks like a different system, but it’s not really. In Canada, the government pays for all medical care. Under Obama, the government will work through private insurance companies, as well as its own insurance plan, to deliver health care. But there’s not much difference.
Obama would offer insurance to everyone, making employers write policies for their workers or pay an equivalent amount into a fund to give them insurance.